Largest Sodium Sulfur Battery Powers a Texas Town

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 6, 2010 @06:15PM from the where-were-you-when-the-lights-went-out dept.

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."

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Re:WTF? by gzipped_tar · 2010-04-06 19:40 · Score: 0, Troll

oops, I mean polysulfide. See, that's perhaps why people think it's acid.
ZOMG SO4 ACID RAIN WE"RE DOOMED

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Re:Question: how much energy did it take to make i by Rogerborg · 2010-04-06 23:28 · Score: 1, Troll

I'm not saying anything, I'm asking a question. It's one which is rarely asked, and almost never answered. You'll note that I discounted (dollar) "cost" right up front - I'm only interested in energy. You'll further note that the article explicitly talks about using BOBs as storage for renewable generation.
If you don't know the answer, you could just say so.

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