To Get Off the Carbon - Energy Storage

As people have heard me say before, the most interesting new bit of energy news is the fledgling push on energy storage technologies. In the media and political push for "new" sources of power supply, what's often gotten short shrift is that any low carbon or carbon-free grid system is going to have to replace the largely carbon burning intermittent and peak power units with something else. Renewables generally won't do and neither with new nukes. One is intermittent and the other is a baseload supply that can't be ramped up or down to follow the demand curve.

So either way things sort out, energy storage is going to be a huge part of any post-carbon scenario. Not just extra batteries for that Prius plug-in but also utility scaled electrical storage systems. Of course with enough plug-ins and inverters, you can combine those two visions as "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) technology.

If nukes are the way of it, the storage units would suck up the extra power they're putting out at night and provide it for the peaks of the next day. Likewise with renewable supply, surplus power would be stored up and used when the sun doesn't shine or the wind isn't blowing. It's all good with energy storage.

Energy Storage Coming to a Power Grid Near You - Green Tech - CNET - 27 Jun 08

"'Buying power at night and then selling it during the day--something like that will happen maybe in 30 or 40 years when storage technologies are one-tenth the costs they are today,' said Ric Fulop, co-founder and vice president of business development at lithium-ion battery company A123 Systems.

But as utilities try out new technologies for different uses, Fulop and others predicted that storage will start to take hold in a variety of ways. 'I think we will see a lot of deployments in the next few years that will change how the grid works,' Fulop said. 'Then we'll see utilities jump on the bandwagon.'

A123 Systems, which makes batteries for plug-in hybrids and power tools among other devices, is actively pushing into utility storage with more than 100 people dedicated to the market, said Fulop.

It's targeting what's called grid stabilization, or grid support, where warehouse-size installations of lead-acid batteries are the incumbent technology. That alone is a multimillion dollar market and will pave the way for different grid storage applications, he said. With grid stabilization, kilowatts' or a couple of megawatts' worth of electricity are pumped onto the grid for a short amount of time, from a few seconds to under an hour. It's used to match grid demand and supply to make generators run more efficiently or to ensure a steady frequency."

Images: What's In Store For Power Grid Storage - CNET - 27 Jun 08

"A 'megawatt-class' battery attached to American Electric Power's grid in Charleston, W.V. It's used as a buffer, able to generate a few hours of power for an overloaded substation. These are sodium sulfur batteries from NGK Insulators of Japan. One of its battery purchases--part of a plan to buy 25 megawatts of storage this decade--will be used to store electricity generated by wind turbines next year.

These massive batteries don't come cheap. Installing three of them, capable of discharging 6 megawatts, will cost about $27 million. That's part of the reason that American Electric Power's use of storage on the grid is the exception, rather than the rule."

To Get Off the Carbon - Energy Storage

As people have heard me say before, the most interesting new bit of energy news is the fledgling push on energy storage technologies. In the media and political push for "new" sources of power supply, what's often gotten short shrift is that any low carbon or carbon-free grid system is going to have to replace the largely carbon burning intermittent and peak power units with something else. Renewables generally won't do and neither with new nukes. One is intermittent and the other is a baseload supply that can't be ramped up or down to follow the demand curve.

So either way things sort out, energy storage is going to be a huge part of any post-carbon scenario. Not just extra batteries for that Prius plug-in but also utility scaled electrical storage systems. Of course with enough plug-ins and inverters, you can combine those two visions as "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) technology.

If nukes are the way of it, the storage units would suck up the extra power they're putting out at night and provide it for the peaks of the next day. Likewise with renewable supply, surplus power would be stored up and used when the sun doesn't shine or the wind isn't blowing. It's all good with energy storage.

Energy Storage Coming to a Power Grid Near You - Green Tech - CNET - 27 Jun 08

"'Buying power at night and then selling it during the day--something like that will happen maybe in 30 or 40 years when storage technologies are one-tenth the costs they are today,' said Ric Fulop, co-founder and vice president of business development at lithium-ion battery company A123 Systems.

But as utilities try out new technologies for different uses, Fulop and others predicted that storage will start to take hold in a variety of ways. 'I think we will see a lot of deployments in the next few years that will change how the grid works,' Fulop said. 'Then we'll see utilities jump on the bandwagon.'

A123 Systems, which makes batteries for plug-in hybrids and power tools among other devices, is actively pushing into utility storage with more than 100 people dedicated to the market, said Fulop.

It's targeting what's called grid stabilization, or grid support, where warehouse-size installations of lead-acid batteries are the incumbent technology. That alone is a multimillion dollar market and will pave the way for different grid storage applications, he said. With grid stabilization, kilowatts' or a couple of megawatts' worth of electricity are pumped onto the grid for a short amount of time, from a few seconds to under an hour. It's used to match grid demand and supply to make generators run more efficiently or to ensure a steady frequency."

Images: What's In Store For Power Grid Storage - CNET - 27 Jun 08

"A 'megawatt-class' battery attached to American Electric Power's grid in Charleston, W.V. It's used as a buffer, able to generate a few hours of power for an overloaded substation. These are sodium sulfur batteries from NGK Insulators of Japan. One of its battery purchases--part of a plan to buy 25 megawatts of storage this decade--will be used to store electricity generated by wind turbines next year.

These massive batteries don't come cheap. Installing three of them, capable of discharging 6 megawatts, will cost about $27 million. That's part of the reason that American Electric Power's use of storage on the grid is the exception, rather than the rule."