'sun in a box' could power an entire city using renewable energy stored in vast vats of molten silicon - battery energy storage system
A brand new "city Battery" can store excess heat in fused silicon.
MIT researchers say their "Sun in the box" can store excess energy from solar and wind energy and send it back to the grid as needed.
This will allow cities to power not only when the sun rises or when the wind is high, but also around the clock.
The new design stores heat in a large white tank
Hot melt silicon.
Then, when needed, it can turn back the light from the glowing metal.
Researchers estimate that a single storage system can make a small city with about 100,000 households fully powered by renewable energy.
"People are starting to call our concept" the sun in the box, "created by my colleague Shannon yeer at Georgia Tech," Robert N. Henry
Noyce associate professor of career development, Department of Mechanical Engineering, who leads the project, said.
It will be much cheaper than lithium.
Ion batteries are considered a viable but expensive way to store renewable energy.
They also estimate that the cost of the system is about half the cost of the pumped storage power station.
Cheapest grid form
Energy storage at scale so far.
The new storage system stems from the study of concentrated solar energy, which uses huge mirrors to concentrate sunlight on the tower in the center, and light is converted into heat that eventually translates into electricity.
The interesting reason for the technology, Henry says, is that once you 've completed the process of focusing the light to get the heat, you can store the heat much cheaper than storing the electricity.
Concentrated solar power plants store solar heat in large tanks filled with molten salt, which are heated to a high temperature of about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
When electricity is needed, the hot salt is pumped through the heat exchanger, which converts the heat of the salt into steam.
The turbine then converts steam into electricity.
Henry's team is looking for a medium other than salt that can store heat at higher temperatures and settle on silicon
The richest metal on Earth, able to withstand the incredible heat of more than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Last year, the team developed a pump that can withstand such a heat that can pump liquid silicon out through a renewable storage system, and they have softened a miniature graphite tank, fill it with liquid silicon to test the plan.