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Largest Sodium Sulfur Battery Powers a Texas Town
separsons writes "The largest sodium sulfur battery in America, nicknamed 'BOB,' can provide enough electricity to power all of Presidio, Texas. Until now, the small town relied on a single 60-year-old transmission line to connect it to the grid, so the community frequently experienced power outages. BOB, which stands for 'Big-Old Battery,' began charging earlier this week. The house-sized battery can deliver four megawatts of power for up to eight hours. Utilities are looking into similar batteries to store power from solar and wind so that renewables can come online before the country implements a smart grid system."
...and how much would a gas or diesel powered generator with a 4MW capacity cost? Since the battery consists of rather dangerous chemicals (e.g. pure sodium metal), has a limited life span and has to operate at 350C (ok - that's probably less of an issue in Texas in the summer ;-) it is hard to see any environmental argument for it over a diesel generator once the heating, production and charge/discharge efficiency are factored in.
Agreed. A 4MW generator is going to run $1-2M, or you could buy one rebuilt for far less. For another million, you could install enough flywheel storage to last you until the generators can be brought online. Double it for added redundancy, and you're still talking 1/3 the upfront cost of the system.
The pilot studies in South Africa show that pebble bed reactors acn abe built for $800 to $1000 per kilowatt. A 4mW reactor could be built for around $4 million and they could completely disconnect themselves from the grid.
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