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Batteries To Store Wind Energy
Roland Piquepaille writes "Scientific American reports that Xcel Energy, a Minneapolis-based utility company, has started to test a new technology to store wind energy in batteries. The company is currently trying it in a 1,100 megawatt facility of wind turbines in Southern Minnesota. The company started this effort because 'the wind doesn't always blow and, even worse, it often blows strongest when people aren't using much electricity, like late at night.' It has received a $1 million grant from Minnesota's Renewable Development Fund and the energy plant should be operational (PDF) in the first quarter of 2009. If this project is successful, the utility expects to deploy many more energy plants before 2020 to avoid more polluting energy sources."
Look out Xcel Energy, the committee to award the Noble Prize in Obviousness is looking your way.
I hope it's not 9 volt. Those are hard to find.
Why are more utilitys not using something like what beacon power is doing.
Storing energy in flywheels. Spin it up when the wind blows. Draw it off when you need it. They last for a very long time when compared to batterys.
Batterys are kind of high priced for a low lifetime. Require all kinds of nasty chemicals to make and need to be disposed of someday. And take HUGE banks to store what a large flywheel would store.
Seems silly...
This is an old dream, but is has almost always been defeated by economy. And according to the article, it still is, though it is getting better:
[i]But it is expensive, costing roughly $3 million per megawatt plus millions for start-up and testing. "Right now, they're a little too expensive," Novachek says.[/i]
Looking at the numbers, it seems like a small-scale test setup. 7 MWh is not much in an 1100 MW wind turbine facility.
i would have to say that it always blows in the day, however in the evenings and during the night there is seldom any wind.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
i believe some dams release water through the turbines during peak times, then pump it back up off peak at night with excess cheap electricity ready for the next day, is that not a reasonable form of energy storage? i imagine a similar level of energy storage in anything recognisable as a battery would be insanely expensive and/or involve alot of toxic chemicals
Modern flywheels are better than these large batteries for the short term storage of power ( ie days ) on an number of levels :(
I'd pump water UP to store the energy and let it flow DOWN to release the energy.
Granted it might not be as efficient as battery storage but it would be cheap, deploy-able right now, and it can be made as large as needed, plus it can be used to extinguish fires "downhill' and slake thirst.
It doesn't even have to be in the same place as the wind farm. Just in front of it, like in the mountains like the ones that cause the chinooks winds in Alberta.
I can see setting up a mountain top reservoir, filling it with water pumped by excess energy and emptying it when needed.
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MIT's Daniel Nocera is working on fuel cells and solar power as the energy storage, if the economics can be worked out.
Could you store the energy by splitting water and storing the Hydrogen? When you burn it back you'd also have some pretty clean water. I don't know what expense is involved large scale, but it could also serve as a step to the oft talked about Hydrogen economy.
Batteries need to be replaced, and are composed of a number of undesirable chemicals. Seems like ultra-capacitors might be of use here. Several orders of magnitude more recharge cycles and generally safer. Portability isn't an issue, so they could be as big and heavy as needed.
sounds like a cool potential battery technology too. The battery element determines the power, and the amount of energy storage is only limited by the size of the tanks.
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/oct/29-the-element-that-could-change-the-world/
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I don't know if this is feasible but I've always thought that a mechanical solution would be better. Use the excess energy to lift a huge weight like the weights on a pendulum clock. When the wind dies down, just let the weight power a generator. Assuming concrete is reasonably environmentally friendly this would be a pretty clean solution.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Some sort of cylindrical container for holding liquids one intends to imbibe?
You'd better patent that before someone else does.
That's being done... with millions of tons of water.
Millions of tons of concrete would be slightly more difficult to handle.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Flywheel energy storage
"Applications
Uninterruptible power supply
Flywheel power storage systems in current production (2001) have storage capacities comparable to batteries and faster discharge rates. They are mainly used to provide load leveling for large battery systems, such as an uninterruptible power supply for data centers.[9]
Flywheel maintenance in general runs about one-half the cost of traditional battery UPS systems. The only maintenance is a basic annual preventive maintenance routine and replacing the bearings every three years, which takes about four hours.[5]"
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
an huge hydrogen tank?
wasn't this what they say? that hydrogen may not be efficent to produce, but it's a hell of a battery?
Some of you are discussing using a flywheel. Does anyone have some data on the efficiency of that technology versus using this type of battery? My first thought would be that coming up with bearings for a flywheel that can handle the mass of the wheel yet be as close to frictionless as possible would be difficult and expensive to develop and then later to maintain.
As I read this about batteries, I'd love for someone with a lot more experience and knowledge to chime in on potential energy storage as opposed to these chemical/electrical? I would assume it to be a lot less expensive to build/install and maintain over the long term to have the wind (for example) pump water up a tower and then use gravity and water the water coming down to generate electricity. Seems like using the wind to create potential energy could be cheaper (and simple) if we had some ingenious concepts working on that. It would also be better for exporting to real polluting nations like India and China.
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Pumped storage is about 60-70% efficient, I wonder how this compares?
Don't worry about it, that's just a side effect of the recent communist invasion of Slashdot. So, you know, no more Russian reversals.
In my limited experience of using battery banks (2-4 AAs or Cs in series or parallel), the most common cause of failure is having them in series while charging: small changes in cell chemistry mean that the batteries in a pack don't discharge at the same rate, so when you start charging one battery is at 0% and the other at 20%. This kills the battery that was at 0%. Battery life is extended greatly if you charge every cell individually instead of putting them in series (as most home-grade battery chargers do).
From the diagram, it looks like each module contains hundreds of cells, with the cells connected by busbars. Looks like a recipe for failure to me. What's the secret?
Use that.. 54 megawhat hours of storage
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If ultra-capacitors become something more tangible than vaporware, I can see this approach becoming much more viable. As it is, with the hidden costs to the environment and economy of chemical batteries, the actual cost-benefit ratio here is a bit more murky, I think.
The summary says:
"The company is currently trying it in a 1,100 megawatt facility of wind turbines in Southern Minnesota."
while Sciam says:
"Winter winds howl off the Dakota prairie through Minnesota, turning the 1,100 megawatts worth of wind turbines in Xcel Energy's system in that state."
These guys, especially the submitter seem to imply that a 1100 MW wind facility exists... I don't know of any wind facility of this size, plus, according to the company (http://www.xcelenergy.com/Company/AboutUs/Pages/Temp.aspx) they only have 25 MW of installed wind power... just wondering...
1,100 megawatts, eh? Why, that's almost 1.21 gigawatts! Now we just need to come up with a flux capacitor and find an old Delorian!
The only way to tell the difference between a hamster and a gerbil is that the hamster has more white meat.
Gosh, how about that. Using batteries to store excess electricity (instead of disconnecting currently unused towers). Or even better than that (as one engineer pointed out) using brakes to slow the turbines to match line generation 60 cycle power (I'm serious about the last one). My idea was always to electrolyze water (into hydrogen and oxygen in a large cell), and when needed use a fuel cell to turn it back into electricity (DC), then use a precision dc-ac converter and a phase-locked-loop circuit to match power line frequency exactly. Why batteries and other long-term storage solutions have not been used up to this point is absolutely baffleing.
In the wind alley, they do a lot of farming, right? Why not create two level reservoirs, one a hundred and fifty feet higher than the other, and then when there is excess production, you pump the lower reservoir into the higher one. Even better, find some underground features that would make it easy to create underground reservoirs with different elevations. And if you hit a hot spot of granite, even better - redirect the steam so it spins some turbines.
Drought presents problems to open air reservoirs. It may actually be cheaper to use superconducting transmission lines to somewhere with better natural features.
If WalMart and Sams Club covered all of the parking lots with solar panels, not only would they reduce localized heat effects, it would probably be enough to power all air conditioning in the south during those hot sunny days. I don't know why any sprawl areas are looking for huge plots of lands to stick solar powered plants on. They have hundreds of square miles of parking lots already, they just need to be leased from the malls and stores.
But, as always, the best way to save energy is still conservation. It's 100% effective and free. Unfortunately there's no profit in efficiency, and thus it's not a political option.
I thought Roland was gone for good!
Its pretty bad when 80% of what I read here I saw on Digg 4 days ago......
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When we put the batteries at the consumer end we have only half the transmission losses, compare to a distributed system like bittorrent.
Now the world seems to embrace the electric car these can, as long as they are connected to the charging point, be excellent buffers for excess energy.
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Generate hydrogen and release the energy back using a fuel cell.
Though, I like the distributed storage system idea better. I think that will actually lead to better battery technology faster than almost any other system.
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This is an important test of the scaling of sodium sulphur battery technology. The price might be high but it is simple enough and uses cheap and relatively environmentally safe materials. I am optimistic about the ability to bring the cost down. The vanadium battery like fuel cells is still reliant on expensive and inefficient ion exchange membranes and toxic vanadium which may not be readily available in large quantities. Pumped hydro is great when it is already near where you would like a battery.
Energy storage technologies can also help us get a better return on our investment in transmission lines.
I like to see advances in battery technologies. It gives a lot more options in transportation, transmission, energy security and flexibility for green energy.
I was a electronics tech on a submarine and had to deal with our battery bank, 125 or so 2 volt batteries, each about 2 foot by 2 foot, and approx 5 feet tall. They required a lot of maintenance and we always had to worry about something happening causing them to explode (there is a lot of energy in batteries that big) just from that I would say this sounds like a bad idea`
That's a buck per watt.
;-)
I have a 1000 watt-hour lead-acid battery (deep discharge) and a 1500 watt inverter. Together, they cost me a couple of hundred bucks. That's about $0.20 per watt-hour.
I'm not sure what tfa refers to when it mentions megawatts; ie. megawatts or megawatt-hours. In any event, my low tech solution sounds like it is an order of magnitude cheaper. I realize that I'm ignoring important things like the relatively short life of the batteries but an order of magnitude difference in cost gives the low tech solution rather a lot of wiggle room.
I am so sick of science writers who mess up the story because they don't understand the units of energy and power.
The article says the batteries store 7 megawatt hours. Fine.
Then it goes on to say "meaning the 20 batteries are capable of delivering roughly one megawatt of electricity almost instantaneously" WTF does that mean? Power, measured in megawatts is by definition an instantaneous unit. What's with "almost instantaneous". Also, the rate of discharge of a battery MW is unrelated to its storage capacity MWh, so the entire meaning of the sentence makes no sense.
Then the article says, "Over 100 megawatts of this technology [is] deployed throughout the world," Huh? Battery capacity is measured in megawatt-hours, not megawatts.
Then the article says, "costing roughly $3 million per megawatt" same thing. Battery cost must be proportional to megawatt-hours, not megawatts.
I suspect that their idea is to make a battery with 24 megawatt-hours of capacity able to deliver 1 megawatt of power uniformly for 24 hours, then say so.
Shame on Sciam writers and double shame on Sciam editors for not mastering such basic units in an article about energy.
How about a little economics. The article mentions two understandable numbers, an 11 MW wind plant, and 7 MWh of battery capacity. The combination of the two, allowing for wind variations during the day believably deliver 1 MW continuously to the grid. That's 24 MWh per day.
Now the batteries cost $3 million, and the wind generators cost $22 million. Total $25 million to deliver 1 MW of base load. That's $25 billion per GW.
The peak generating capacity of North America is about 750 GW. Let's say 250 GW when levelized to base load. Therefore, to supply 100% of that with wind and batteries would cost roughly $6.2 trillion dollars. Now Al Gore says, "No problem. We can do that in just 10 years." WTF is he thinking?
Even if we did spend $6.2 T, there will still be periods where not much wind blows for large regions for many weeks at a time. I live where it's cold, and I know that when it hits -30F, the wind is almost always still and the sky dark, and that it can stay like that for a couple of weeks. We therefore, need to double or triple the $6.2T plus more for transmission, to provide backup power sources, plus the means of delivering the energy over large distances.
Wind and solar are wonderful for up to 15-1-20% of the total grid generation and the cost of construction and operations dominate. More than that, and reliability and deliverability of the electric supply become dominant in the economic equation.
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To me, it seems like the problems of making energy and storing energy are different problems and a good way to store energy has applications no matter how it is produced. Obviously a energy source with no carbon footprint is better.
They should be using a thermal energy system. Simply save the electricity as heat and then feed it back later.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I remember coming across a cutaway view of a 50's Gyrobus in an old copy of Popular Mechanics. The idea dates back to the '40s. What was wanted was the 3 minute quick-charge tram for lightly-traveled routes that didn't warrant the expense of overheads. The name hints of the problems you'll encounter mounting a 3 ton flywheel in a 20 ton bus.
nt;-/
This is not at all feasible. For the 1100MW plant, lets say they use common car batteries to save costs. An average car battery is capable of somewhere around 400A at 12V. Keep in mind that at this discharge level the battery isn't going to last very long. Lets say 5000W for a short period of time. You would need 220,000 batteries to make 1100MW. This ignores all losses, which makes this even more optomistic.
I am aware of one facility that uses batteries to power Fairbanks, as reported some time ago here. But even that facility is not really useful, and Fairbanks is not a huge city- perhaps only 100MW or so.
There are many ideas for storing wind power, but I don't think batteries should be considered an option unless some radical advancements are made. Water electrolysis, pumping water uphill, etc are all much better ideas. But ultimately, storing the amount of power that even a small city uses is a problem which has yet to be solved.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
In this country we don't really have an energy shortage. We have a grid shortage. There's loads of wind and geo thermal and solar and tide energy all in places with feeble grids. That's why for example that texas dude is lobbying to get texas to build grids in the middle of no where. so he can transport his wind energy (to his water pumps but that's another story).
SO the propoer thing to do is not to store wind energy but to send it to consumers AT THE TIME THEY ARE USING THE LEAST POWER. send the ind energy at night when the wind is strong and the grids are unused. Now you don't need as big a grid.
the small existing ones can transport more. and the money you were going to spend for peak loads can be used for the last mile to the wind farms.
consumers can store it in batteries or as heat (electric thermal storage) or make hydrogen fuels, maybe charge the electric car.
give consumers the right to buy the cheapest or greenest power and they will pay for and maintain the batteries.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
In soviet slashdot batteries charge you!
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You want to store wind energy with a mechanical solution? Two words: rubber bands. Proof: those little balsa airplanes with the rubber-banded propellers.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Think big.
Take a million car batteries. Yup, lead acid. Why a million car batteries? Because they're so cheap -- we made a hundred million of them last year, and they're one of the best recycling stories out there). Don't be clever. New tech means R&D, and that means unexpected surprises.
Store them in buildings which are above 50 degrees F so that they last a very long time (and certainly not conditions under a hood). Some place near a large interconnect.
Use an inverter, or, just hook the batteries up with IGBT switches to "thermometer" up the voltage, and then back down, making AC.
I'm aware that this is limited storage; the batteries don't like to run at load capacity for long. But also note that Fairbanks has, I believe, 25 megawatts of battery backup.
I'll throw this into the "fresh meat" bowl here ...
-- Dave Small
this might sound a bit stupid .. but isn't storage of energy completely independent of its source be it wind, hydro etc.
or is there something special or uniquely challenging about storing wind energy i am not aware of ?
I can't stop thinking about how the wind energy generated at low energy consumption times would be perfect for generating the hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cells. There is an energy surplus that would be going nowhere, and hydrogen generation requires more energy than it produces. If only hydrogen fuel cells were "here".
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
I am so sick of science writers who mess up the story because they don't understand the units of energy and power.
The article says the batteries store 7 megawatt hours. Fine.
Then it goes on to say "meaning the 20 batteries are capable of delivering roughly one megawatt of electricity almost instantaneously" WTF does that mean? ...
Had you bothered to read the rest of that sentence you'd have seen where the writer said that the batteries would provide one megawatt of electricity for seven hours which is the battery capacity of 7 MWh.
I am confused as to why this is news. Are the utility companies dumber than dirt? Using battery storage systems is an integral part of any DIY wind generating facility, and is just basic common sense.
Additionally, just because you live in a place that may not be appropriate for wind generation doesn't mean that the place where this wind farm is isn't. Wind won't be the only answer to our energy problems and the article doesn't try to make that claim. There are numerous solutions, none are cheap because it means creating new infra-structure. But the infra-structure we have wasn't cheap to build either. It just occurred over a longer span of time.
Once this country and other countries bite the bullet and begin establishing the infra-structure the rewards will far outweigh the initial costs. Lastly, a solar plant could be built in Nevada or another neighboring state today that could provide 100% of the US electricity needs ( a solar farm the size of DC ought to do it, but I'll leave the math proof as an exercise. Anyone can google for commercial solar panels and calculate what the total surface area would take. The cost would be huge naturally, and of course you'd have logistical nightmares and a single point of failure configuration. But it could be done, so your strange, non-scientific, 15-1-20% (WTF is that?) doesn't even come close. Where's your cite for that crazy percentage?
Like everybody else the nuclear power people have promises that are 5 years away... Unlike most others, building that next gen plant will take a decade and cost a crazy amount of money and not prove itself for likely 10 more years. They've had decades of time and billions in welfare money around the world to maintain, build, dispose and enhance nuclear power. The time is up. Many of us will no longer be suckered.
Nuclear power operates at crazy costs and the risks prevent it from being a private venture; therefore, government has to do it then hand it over to private control then provide free regulation and waste storage etc. It always has been too expensive without government covering the costs (while letting private management walk off with profits from our tax money... Yes, if it was fair, they'd pay us back-- but then they'd not be in business either...)
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Why not store the excess power by pumping water up to a higher large resevoir, and use basic hydroelectric generators to reclaim the energy when needed. Plus, it would give us another place to water ski in the summer.
Compressed air is another means of storing wind energy that is getting looked at again. The CAES schemes need large geological structures such as salt mines or depleted gas fields, but there are quite a lot of viable structures in places like Texas and Ontario where there is also interest in wind energy. It is not economical on a small scale since a large part of the compression cost is independent of the reservoir size.
According to the US Department of Energy "nearly two-thirds of the natural gas in a conventional power plant is consumed by a typical natural gas turbine because the gas is used to drive the machine's compressor. In contrast, a compressed-air storage plant uses low-cost heated compressed air to power the turbines and create off-peak electricity, conserving some natural gas."
In the last 20 years only two facilities have ever been built - a 110-megawatt plant in Alabama and a 290-megawatt plant in Germany. Iowa is building a new plant "expected to cost $200 million and operate by 2011 with the capacity to store 200 megawatts of power, enough for several days. Both the Iowa and Alabama installations can draw air to make power within 15 minutes and make a gas turbine roughly 40 percent more efficient. "
http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/compressed_air.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081224-full-of-powerful-wind-bury-it-in-the-ground-for-later.html
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/553702
http://www.isepa.com/index.asp Iowa Stored Energy Park
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-178929.html
In soviet slashdot batteries charge you!
How much do they charge, and can I get a discount on my power?
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
But it could be done, so your strange, non-scientific, 15-1-20% (WTF is that?) doesn't even come close. Where's your cite for that crazy percentage?
He left that as an exercise. WTF? Are you a math professor or something?
Lastly, a solar plant could be built in Nevada or another neighboring state today that could provide 100% of the US electricity needs ( a solar farm the size of DC ought to do it, but I'll leave the math proof as an exercise.
His statement is about as crazy as you saying we should use the state of Nevada for a solar farm.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
I get the scalability factor here - every new windplant comes with the necessary storage - but in total battery capacity this seems wasteful. The batteries are better downstream, closer to the electricity's ultimate destination. The transmission losses can be significant so why not store the lesser amount of energy close to the last mile instead of at the start before the transmission losses?
As a specific example the windfarms near Palm Springs and the Arizona border power many homes and businesses in LA. "Edge caching" the power nearer to the energy's endpoint could cut back battery costs significantly here.
Just so you know, from what i've seen, the math works out to something along the lines of: if we built enough wind towers to supply every watt of power needed by every human on earth, the earth would gain a SOLID second, not a leap second, in 10,000 years. yea, I think i'll skip the panic.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I didn't say we "should". I said we "could". Not to mention that the state of Nevada is a mite bigger than DC. An 8 square mile tract of desert in Nevada isn't going to be a big deal, but could do a lot to relieve our dependency on oil and coal.
I don't know. The last estimate I heard for the government "bailout" for our failing economy was $8 trillion. When the government is throwing around billions and trillions of dollars at a whim (throwing it at people who have proven that they have no business touching other people's money) what is another $6.2 trillion toward something that might actually be beneficial? ;-)
$6.2 trillion just doesn't sound as big as it once did, and hyperinflation will make that even more true soon enough.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
Flywheels have been around for decades and I was wondering that myself. My neighbor is a mathematician who worked designing flywheels, which when I found out promptly inquired. Apparently they're always breaking down, which takes the entire windmill out of operation. The engineering strength required for these is pretty expensive so they either cut corners or build breakage prone flywheels. Think of the weight necessary to store the energy which needs to be supported for the duration that energy is stored. It needs a large triple thread with bearings so that rather than spin down, it will turn its central axle which takes over the energy production. It also requires a complex clutching mechanism so that it will engage/disengage when it's at the bottom/top of it's lifting range. It's a good idea, just not affordable because of the engineering requirements. I say we drill and go nuclear. Nuclear for the grid, petro/ng for our cars.
Thanks for the rest of the analysis, but:
to supply 100% of that with wind and batteries would cost roughly $6.2 trillion dollars
USA spent over a trillion dollars on non-renewable energy a year (DOE reports), much of that goes to clueless klepto/auto/theo-cracies overseas and bastard oil companies. So, spending $600 billion a year to reduce that seems a pretty good deal on economics without even considering the pollution and employment stimulus benefits. Of course that trillion+ is more than just electricity, USA "only" spent 368 billion for electricity in 2006 (RAND report). But a smart grid powered by renewables goes hand-in-hand with switching transportation from fossil fuels to recharging battery and hybrid vehicles.
=S
When you compress air it gets hot. A lot of the work you do goes to heat. As it cools, the pressure drops. The net effect is a huge loss of efficiency.
If you can pressurize it and keep it from cooling off, you can get more of the energy back.
Anybody got the figures for compressor efficiency?
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[SemanticNazi] Grammar Nazis don't care about spelling. [/SemanticNazi]
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