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Storing Wind Power In Cold Stores

Posted by kdawson on from the timeshifting-the-wind dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to Nature, a European-funded project has been launched to store electricity created from wind in refrigerated warehouses used to store food. As the production of wind energy is variable every day, it cannot easily be accommodated on the electrical grid. So the 'Night Wind' project wants to store wind energy produced at night in refrigerated warehouses and to release this energy during daytime peak hours. The first tests will be done in the Netherlands this year. And as the cold stores exist already, practically no extra cost should be incurred to store as much as 50,000 megawatt-hours of energy. Here are additional details and a picture illustrating this brilliant idea."

2 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This doesn't matter with regard to wind power. by IHC+Navistar · · Score: 0, Troll

    mod parent up!

    --
    Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
  2. Re:Holy Frozen Kippers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yep. Wow. Yawn. Those Europeans are so damn smart........NOT!

    Here is a much better way to store off peak energy where you can add the energy back into the grid on demand, but since it was built over 35 years ago nobody remembers or cares.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Stor age_Power_Plant

    The Ludington Pumped Storage Plant is a hydroelectric plant and reservoir in Ludington, Michigan. It was built between 1969 and 1973.

    It consists of a reservoir 110 ft (34 m) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) long, and one mile (1.6 km) wide which holds 27 billion US gallons (100 million m) of water. The reservoir is located on the banks of Lake Michigan. The powerplant consists of six reversible turbines that can each generate 312 megawatts of electricity for a total output of 1872 megawatts. It is owned jointly by Consumers Energy and Detroit Edison and operated by Consumers Energy.

    At night, during low demand for electricity, the turbines run in reverse to pump water 363 ft (110 m) uphill from Lake Michigan into the reservoir. The plant takes advantage of the natural steep sand dune landform of eastern Lake Michigan. During periods of peak demand water is released to generate power. Electrical generation can begin within 2 minutes.

    This process helps level the load of coal-fired power plants on the grid. It also replaces the need to build natural gas peak power plants used only during high demand.

    This project was given the 1973 award for "Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement" by the American Society of Civil Engineers.