a storage solution is in the air - home energy storage system

Erika by GIESOCT. 1, 2012PARIS —
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar have a problem: when the wind stops or at night, they stop generating electricity.
This disadvantage focuses on how to store the power generated by intermittent power supplies.
The value of the global energy storage service market could be as high as $31.
5 billion on 2017, according to Brian Warshay, an analyst at Lux Research, a Boston consulting firm.
The ultimate goal of power grid operators is to match the power they provide with the needs of their customers.
Utilities have traditionally increased natural gas production
Power plants burn when there is a need for a smooth supply and demand, but in theory the energy storage system can do the job faster and cleaner.
Depending on the storage location, it can also reduce the need for new transmission lines.
As investment interest increases: venture capitalists and governments are funding research on batteries, pumped water and electricity, Flywheel and compressed air.
Advertising battery technology has received a lot of attention, but compressed air is also moving forward.
In an ideal storage system, all input energy can be extracted later.
However, when the air is compressed, the work that goes into compression produces heat as a side effect.
In earlier compressed storage systems
Technically called a demon.
The environment around them lost heat and reduced their efficiency.
The current experimental system is designed to improve efficiency by keeping or recovering heat.
Some are called constant temperature, using coolant to absorb it, keeping the air at a temperature close to a constant.
The separately stored coolant is tapped later to give back energy through a heat exchange system.
Others are called insulated, allowing the temperature of compressed air to rise and fall, using air during heat to heat the heat storage body that retains energy in the system.
Sustatham, based in West Brook, New Hampshire, will build a pilot constant temperature plant that will be able to store and release up to two megawatts of electricity, the biggest technological showcase yet.
Meanwhile, a German consortium is planning to build a real grid. scale project —
An initial increase of 90 megawatts
Based on the thermal insulation method.
From the point of view of thermodynamics, constant temperature and thermal insulation are the terms for ensuring perfect efficiency without energy loss.
In practice, a compromise must be made for each system to reduce efficiency to 50 to 70%.
Facilities in sustatham, follow-upup to a 40-
Part of the funding for the kilowatt-class demonstration plant came from $5. 4 million U. S.
Under the 2009 US Recovery and Reinvestment Act, government grants are provided in part by venture capital.
Richard Brody, vice president of business development, said the company could start testing operations by next June. Although its storage capacity is only an hour or two, it was not originally intended to power the grid.
"It aims to validate and demonstrate this technology to our engineering team and our customers," he said . ".
Both sustapler and the German consortium are looking to improve the non-diabetes technology used in existing utilities
Scale facilities in Hentov, Germany and Mackintosh, Alabama.
In these systems, when the demand is low, the operator uses the remaining power from the power grid to pump the high-pressure air into the underground salt hole and drain the by-product heat out of the atmosphere.
When the power grid needs energy, the air is released and re-heated by the burning gas, and then generated by the turbine.
Fine Mist water is used as coolant during the constant temperature process of sustapler.
When the power grid is needed, compressed air flows back through the heated water to recover the stored energy before it is delivered to the turbine.
Advertising for venture capitalfunded start-
Light sail Energy in Berkeley, California has built two prototypes using similar technologies
Both Light sail and sustapler use specially built containers instead of underground caves to store compressed air.
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At the same time, the General Compression of Newton, Massachusetts is studying a near
A constant temperature system stored using a salt hole, such as an early non-thermal insulation system.
General Compression and its partner, ConocoPhillips, are developing a project in West Texas. Mr.
Warshay, who wrote a review about sustapler, said he hoped the project would provide valuable data.
"Because it's D. O. E. -
"With funding available, they will have to publish their performance data, which will help the industry as a whole understand the capabilities of the technology," he said . "S.
Department of Energy.
Because the technology is off-the-
The market will be able to estimate its costs, he added.
Meanwhile, the German consortium is seeking to develop a related insulation technology that allows the temperature of compressed air to change in the range of 600 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius, or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heat generated by the compression process will be stored in large ceramics
Fill the concrete pressure vessel.
The capacity of the prototype factory in the first plan will be up to 90 MW.
A consortium called Adele.
The German initials of insulated compressed air energy storage-
Including the electric power company RWE, the construction and engineering contractor Zurich Lin, the German Aerospace Center and the United StatesS.
GE group.
Currently, the company is in talks on funding from the German government and hopes the demonstration plant will be operational by 2019.
Adele will use salt holes to compress air storage like those ancient demon plants
Its planners are looking at a suitable location near the city of Stassfurt in SaxonyAnhalt —
But the consortium said the addition of ceramics
Improve the efficiency of the whole system to more than 60%.
One advantage of sustapler and light sail over Adele is that their technology is not a site-specific.
They can be placed wherever they are needed: for example, next to a wind farm, or next to a factory that generates its own electricity.
But they also cost more: Roland marquarte, R & D manager of the Adele project RWE Power, says pressurized air storage cannot be larger than using Adele-scale process.
He said that the proportion of renewable energy generation in power systems is getting higher and higher, especially in Germany, which requires drastic thinking. “Three-digit-
The megawatt scale is what we want to have a significant impact on . "Marquardt said.
Advertising will still provide different roles for different technologies, he added. Mr.
Brody of sustatham warned that given the current low price of natural gas in the United States, the policy framework does not generate strong incentives, "any storage technology is difficult to compete in traditional applications.
So sustapler is looking at other markets where fossil fuel prices and policy incentives are more conducive to economic success.
The company also plans to target more creative applications.
He said: "We see great value, both in the United States and in other markets, where the grid faces limitations that cannot be resolved through conventional power generation or T and D assets, "refers to the expensive investment in transmission and distribution lines.
A version of this special report was published in the International Herald Tribune on October 2, 2012.
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