[Graeme]

The Next Breakthrough in Grid Capacity

The next breakthrough in grid capacity may not be battery storage. Ultracapacitors are faster, discharging in fractions of a second rather than seconds, perform over broader temperature ranges (-40°C to +65°C) and provide more power. As batteries produce and store energy through a chemical reaction, rather than storing it in an electric field, they have more capacity.

According to Dr. Kimberly McGrath, Director of Business Development at San Diego-based Maxwell Technologies, combining these technologies prolongs battery life by not exposing it to the high power conditions. Based on some studies, Maxwell knows ultracapacitors prolong the life of batteries from 10% to +30%.

“The key part of the ultracapacitor technology is that when we talk about cycling, we talk about hundreds of thousands of cycles versus thousands like batteries do. We don’t have the same type of degradation mechanisms. So we have a very long lifespan and that is very important when you talk about grid applications because the energy storage systems on the grid have to last 15 to 20 years,” she said.

An increased usage of ultracapacitors would pave the way for significantly higher adoption of renewable energies into the grid.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

Molten Aluminum Lakes Offer Power Storage for German Wind Farms

Germany’s sprint toward renewable energy makes wholesale power cheap, even free, when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Absent that, prices spike -- this year the day-ahead price of a megawatt-hour has ranged from 52.68 euros ($65.35) to negative 4.13 euros.

The system doesn’t yet have dedicated storage equipment capable of holding large amounts of renewable energy.

Trimet Aluminium SE, Germany’s largest producer of the metal, is experimenting with one answer in a pilot project: using its vast pools of molten metal as virtual batteries.

Making aluminum is extremely power-intensive. To yield each ton of the flexible metal, derived from bauxite that’s been converted into molten aluminum oxide, Trimet needs roughly 14 megawatt-hours, or about 500 euros worth of power. Multiply that by 500,000, the number of tons of aluminum Trimet produced using electrolysis last year, and that’s a lot of power and money humming through the company’s plant near the Rhine-Herne Canal in the western German city of Essen.

bloomberg

[Graeme]

Eos Aurora Energy Storage System Getting Closer To Market-Ready — GDF SUEZ Acquires One For Testing

Eos Energy Storage recently sold one of its new, low-cost zinc hybrid cathode (Znyth) battery systems to the energy giant GDF SUEZ, bringing the company’s pilot demonstration program one step forward — leading the way to the wider deployment of the product in the commercial landscape of Europe sometime in the near future.

This move follows on the heels of the completion of the technology’s 3rd-party testing via DNV GL.

“We are delighted to have GDF SUEZ as our first international customer and as a leading participant in our Genesis program,” stated Eos President Steve Hellman. “GDF SUEZ is one of the largest power producers in the world with operations in 70 countries, a leader in the growing renewable energy industry, and an unmatched innovator in energy technology. We couldn’t ask for a better partner to support our first European testing program and broader global deployment of the Eos product.”

After installation is complete at GDF SUEZ’s battery lab in Linkebeek, Belgium, comprehensive testing (generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and end-use) is set to begin via the company’s R&D division.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

Utility-Scale Battery Storage Is Essential For Both Grid And Consumers

A new report by a Western Australia academic has underlined the importance of grid-scale battery storage, particularly as the penetration of rooftop solar rises to the point where baseload generation will no longer be needed during the daytime. That scenario could arrive soon.

The report by Bill Grace – ominously titled Exploring the Death Spiral – looks at the WA grid, and the forecasts for rooftop solar and battery storage in coming years. He says rooftop solar will be irresistible because of its declining costs, so policy makers and utilities better get used to the idea and they need to plan accordingly.

“The inevitable increase in the take up of private solar PV systems in WA homes and businesses will hasten a transformation of the electricity network during the coming decade that is needed anyway,” says Grace, an adjunct professor who works at the Australian Urban Design Resource Centre.

Battery storage installed on the network is essential to maintain the stability and viability of the grid, and the good news is that it will ultimately result in lower overall costs than the base case that assumes no growth in renewables or rooftop solar. And, of course, it will result in lower emissions – a fall of 25 per cent under his scenario compared to a rise of 20 per cent in the base case.

But the key, Grace says, is in centralised storage. Even large amounts of residential storage will not significantly deflect the major problem caused by rooftop solar- when its combined production will account for more than the entire demand in the state – meaning that baseload and other generators will have no market.

The report by Grace looks only at the WA grid – known as the South West Interconnected System, or SWIS, which is unique in the world in being an isolated grid serving a mature but rapidly growing economy.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

Atmospheric carbon dioxide used for energy storage products

Chemists and engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a fascinating new way to take some of the atmospheric carbon dioxide that's causing the greenhouse effect and use it to make an advanced, high-value material for use in energy storage products.

This innovation in nanotechnology won't soak up enough carbon to solve global warming, researchers say. However, it will provide an environmentally friendly, low-cost way to make nanoporous graphene for use in "supercapacitors" - devices that can store energy and release it rapidly.

Such devices are used in everything from heavy industry to consumer electronics.

The findings were just published in Nano Energy by scientists from the OSU College of Science, OSU College of Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of South Florida and the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Albany, Ore. The work was supported by OSU.

In the chemical reaction that was developed, the end result is nanoporous graphene, a form of carbon that's ordered in its atomic and crystalline structure. It has an enormous specific surface area of about 1,900 square meters per gram of material. Because of that, it has an electrical conductivity at least 10 times higher than the activated carbon now used to make commercial supercapacitors.

"There are other ways to fabricate nanoporous graphene, but this approach is faster, has little environmental impact and costs less," said Xiulei (David) Ji, an OSU assistant professor of chemistry in the OSU College of Science and lead author on the study. "The product exhibits high surface area, great conductivity and, most importantly, it has a fairly high density that is comparable to the commercial activated carbons.

sciencecodex

Can capacitors in electrical circuits provide large-scale energy storage?

Capacitors are widely used in electrical circuits to store small amounts of energy, but have never been used for large-scale energy storage. Now researchers from Japan have shown that the right combination of resistors and capacitors can allow electrical circuits to meet two key requirements of an energy storage device: quick charging and long-term discharging. Using capacitors as energy storage devices in circuits has potential applications for hybrid electric vehicles, backup power supplies, and alternative energy storage.

phys.org

[Graeme]

Grid-Scale Storage: Smooth Operators

Matching output to demand is hard with wind and solar power. The answer is to store surplus juice on the grid until it is needed

ON OCTOBER 28th a battery factory opened in Concord, North Carolina. That was good for an area which has seen dark economic times, but the event made few headlines. Perhaps it should have made more, though, for this factory’s owner, Alevo, a Swiss company, is not in the business of manufacturing cells for torches, mobile phones or even laptop computers. Rather, it is making batteries that can store serious amounts of electricity–megawatt-hours of it. And it plans to sell them to power-grid operators.

To start with, the new batteries will be used to smooth the consequences of irregular demand through the day by absorbing electricity during troughs and regurgitating it during peaks. If that pans out, it will eliminate the need for gas-powered “peaker” stations which fire up quickly when needed, but are expensive to run. It would also allow non-peaker stations to operate more efficiently. Alevo reckons that if a grid as big as America’s Western interconnection (which supplies the west of the United States and Canada) were to use 18GW-worth of its batteries the grid could save $US12 billion a year. Though the company has no North American contract yet, it does have an agreement to deploy its batteries in Guangdong, China.

Smoothing the operation of existing grids, however, may be only the beginning. In the longer run, optimists believe, batteries like these, or some equivalent technology, are the key to dealing with the problem not just of irregular demand, but of irregular supply. As the unit cost of solar and wind energy drops ever closer to that of power from fossil fuels, the fact that the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine becomes more and more irksome. It is not just the great power-gap that is night which matters. As the chart below shows, even during the day–and even in deserts–the amount of sunlight can vary from minute to minute. And the wind, of course, is equally fickle.

businessinsider

[Graeme]

Eventual Trillion-Dollar Market (Not Al Gore) Spurring Energy Storage Growth

Utility-scale energy storage is often discussed like it’s the flying car of renewable energy, but unlike the flying car, there is an immediate need and an eventual trillion-dollar global market to go along with it. After speaking with EnerVault’s new CEO, Ron Mosso; Temporal Power’s President and CTO, Jeff Veltri; and Bic Stevens, who is a former venture capitalist and current founder of the cleantech investment banking firm Stevens Capital Advisors, it is clear this technology is about to take off. Both EnerVault and Temporal Power have new, fully operational, plugged-into-the-grid energy storage facilities and have immediate plans for more.

We may never see the flying car, but as solar and wind prices continue to plummet the need for a means to store energy is not only very real but is becoming critical. Energy storage will be an essential part of future power grids and it actually has little to do with global warming.

There are two basic applications for utility-scale energy storage — long duration and frequency fluctuation. Both will play an important role in the future of utility energy storage, yet will have uniquely different roles and markets. Long-duration energy storage companies like EnerVault, which recently deployed a one megawatt-hour iron chromium flow battery storage facility near Turlock. California, specialize in storing and delivering large amounts of energy. Flow batteries have been around a long time, but only recently has the technology evolved to the point where scientists started to see enough breakthroughs to where research projects could develop into VC-backed startups.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

Groundbreaking technology stores wind power in salt caverns

In the Lloydminster area, a Calgary company is ready to carve out large underground salt caverns to store excess wind energy — the first use of the technology in Canada.

Rocky Mountain Power president Jan van Egteren says the storage sites could be ready in five years.

Salt caverns have been used to store natural gas for years, but only two other projects in North America are using them for compressed air that is turned into electricity.

The caverns are carved out by pumping water deep down to dissolve the underground salt layer peculiar to the Lloydminster area.

Excess wind electricity would be used to pump compressed air into caverns about the size of a 60-storey building. The salt walls allow very little to escape. Then, when the wind dies, the compressed air is released and used to turn a generator to make electricity.

calgaryherald

[Graeme]

While Germany Explores Energy Storage Technologies at Breakneck Speeds, The US Isn’t Far Behind

Philip Hiersemenzel, spokesman for Younicos, stated that Germany could be using 60 percent renewables if the right storage tech were in place. Startling as this announcement seems, the US is not as far behind as people think.

The U.S. is surging ahead in terms of adopting battery storage. In 2013-2014, U.S. companies installed, or were in the process of installing more than 300 MW of energy storage capacity. The largest is Southern California Edison’s Tehachapi Energy Storage Project. It is a 8-MW system capable of supplying 32 megawatt-hours of electricity to the grid.

“One of the shots that was heard around the world was AB 2514, which is a California mandate for the minimum amount of energy storage the utilities have to install by 2020. That minimum allocated across the three major IOUs in California — Southern California Edison (SCE), Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) — totals 1.325 gigawatts,” according to John Jung, CEO of the energy storage software, services & systems company GreenSmith.

renewableenergyworld

[Graeme]

The analysis is done for me. You just have to read the entire article.

Lower-Cost Flow Batteries to Create $190 Million Energy Storage Market in 2020

Giant Flow Batteries Can Provide Large-Scale Energy Storage for the Power Grid, and Falling Costs Will Create a 360 MWh Market, Led by Vanadium-Based Systems, Says Lux Research

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Dec 9, 2014) - Large-scale stationary energy is key to a smarter power grid and for integration of intermittent renewables. Redox flow batteries are touted as an emerging option, but have been too expensive. Now, falling costs will carve out a 360 MWh market in 2020, worth $190 million, according to Lux Research.

Within the stationary energy storage market, four flow battery chemistries, led by vanadium-based systems, are gaining commercial traction. The vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) is the most mature technology, and accounts for 75 MWh of deployed systems.

"VRFBs will remain the dominant system for the medium-term but bromine-based systems are cheaper and will eventually be better-performing on a 10-year horizon," said Dean Frankel, Lux Research Associate and the lead author of the report titled, "Flow Battery Cost Reduction: Exploring Strategies to Improve Market Adoption."

"However, flow batteries will remain limited to longer-duration applications, and are competing directly with fast-moving targets in Li-ion and other next-generation storage technologies," he added.
Lux Research analysts evaluated factors driving cost reduction in flow batteries, and market strategies. Among their findings:

ZnBr is cheapest but questions remain. In Lux Research's model, VRFBs are the most expensive flow battery chemistry, costing $516/kWh in 2024. Zinc bromine (ZnBr) will be the cheapest flow battery at $391/kWh in the same year, but questions remain surrounding their lifetime and operating costs.

Improving power density is key. Flow batteries suffer from relatively poor power density, and improving this metric will drive down costs. Improvements in cell stack power density, for example, can cut VRFB system costs by 33%.

Lowering vanadium input costs will not be a panacea. VRFB developers are claiming that sourcing vanadium from flyash will reduce costs from over $500/kWh today to $300/kWh at scale. However, Lux finds that even in the unrealistic scenario of a free vanadium electrolyte, VRFB system costs will be $324/kWh in 2024.

marketwired

[Graeme]

Implementing energy storage for peak-load shifting

Peak-load shifting is the process of mitigating the effects of large energy load blocks during a period of time by advancing or delaying their effects until the power supply system can readily accept additional load. The traditional intent behind this process is to minimize generation capacity requirements by regulating load flow. If the loads themselves cannot be regulated, this must be accomplished by implementing energy storage systems (ESSs) to shift the load profile as seen by the generators (see Figure 1).

Depending on the application, peak-load shifting can be referred to as "peak shaving" or "peak smoothing." The ESS is charged while the electrical supply system is powering minimal load and the cost of electric usage is reduced, such as at night. It is then discharged to provide additional power during periods of increased loading, while costs for using electricity are increased. This technique can be employed to mitigate utility bills. It also effectively shifts the impact of the load on the system, minimizing the generation capacity required.

Load shifting is not a new concept and has been implemented successfully by end users in numerous industrial and large-scale commercial facilities in the past to decrease electrical peak demand and associated energy costs. With the rapid expansion of renewable energy plants in recent years, peak-load shifting has received noteworthy attention, and for different reasons than in the past. Renewable energy sources-specifically wind and photovoltaics (PV), which have seen exponential growth recently-provide irregular power due to meteorological and atmospheric conditions (see Figure 2). As these power sources come to provide an increasingly significant contribution to the load flow in the electrical grid, their effects become more pronounced on the power quality of that grid. The erratic fluctuations in power generated by these renewables can be detrimental to maintaining transient and dynamic stability within the system. Power quality concerns generally associated with renewable energy sources include voltage transients, frequency deviation, and harmonics.

However, by implementing an energy storage system, it is possible to turn the intermittent source into one with a relatively uniform and consistent output. As such, the large-scale deployment of renewable energy sources coupled with the Smart Grid relies greatly on energy storage systems for maximum effectiveness and optimization.

csemag

[Graeme]

Europe’s Largest Energy Storage Plant Began Its Trial Run

Europe’s largest energy storage plant is now online. Energy & Climate Change Minister Amber Rudd switched on the new UKPN SNS facility in Leighton Buzzard yesterday. The fully automated 6MW/10MWh energy storage unit has commenced its trial run. As the existing infrastructure dates back to the 1970s, this facility represents an immediate +£6m savings over traditional network reinforcement methods such as transformers, cable and overhead lines. More important, this could be the beginning of a technology transition that research from Imperial College could save the UK £3bn a year by in the 2020s, based on the deployment of 2GW of energy storage.

cleantechnica

[ennui2]

The analysis is done for me. You just have to read the entire article.

This is a forum. Not a news-aggregator site.

[Graeme]

That's because the news I bring counters your prejudice. Tough.

Two Nifty Little Nanoscale Lifts For Energy Storage

Just when you thought the world was ready to move beyond lithium batteries, along comes a new discovery that shows how much more juice we can squeeze out of the technology. On the other hand, lithium has been the gold standard for energy storage in a slew of clean tech fields including electric vehicles and large-scale stationary batteries, but it’s beginning to bump up against some competition from other areas.

By other areas we mean sodium batteries. You thought I was going to say fuel cells, right?.

Advanced Energy Storage: Use The Force!

First, let’s take a look at some nano-news in the lithium-ion energy storage field. The item that caught our eye deserves a group hug from all you taxpayers out there, because it comes out of our Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

This is one of those surprise discoveries where you set out to do one thing, and you accidentally discover something else that’s much more exciting.

The research team was trying to measure the properties of polymerized ionic liquid thin films, a highly conductive material with a “unique” structure that has promising applications for lithium batteries and solar cells.

cleantechnica

[careinke]

The analysis is done for me. You just have to read the entire article.

This is a forum. Not a news-aggregator site.

second that.

Rather than whine and expect someone else to solve YOUR problem, you could solve YOUR problem on YOUR own. Ignore him.

Personally, Graemes posts are more positive to me than not. I don't read all of them, but he puts out enough value for ME, that I don't ignore him.

[Keith_McClary]

From 2 different posts:

2GW of energy storage.

300 MW of energy storage capacity

It detracts from their credibility when they measure energy in units of power.

[Graeme]

Keith, Not exactly sure of reason for this. We've discussed this issue earlier in this thread (see page 6). I suspect it's because the energy stored is not being used yet so power units are OK.

Energy-Storage Plans Gain Ground in California

In an unusual competition in California, proposals for energy storage systems beat out hundreds of bids to construct new power plants as a way to meet peak power needs.

Southern California Edison has retired its San Onofre nuclear reactors and is planning to retire natural gas units with environmentally troublesome cooling systems. So it invited proposals for storage — including conventional batteries and giant ice packs — and new gas-fired power plants.

To the surprise of the utility and even the storage companies, in many cases storage won. Demand response, or agreements with customers who volunteer to be unplugged at certain times, also did well.

Looking for 2,221 megawatts of capacity, about the size of two big nuclear plants, the utility selected 264 megawatts of storage, a huge amount for what is still viewed as a fledgling technology.

“It’s much more than we thought would be likely,” said Colin Cushnie, the utility’s vice president for energy procurement and management. The total is about four times all the storage the company now has in place or under construction, he said.

It is also extremely large relative to an order issued last year by the California Public Utilities Commission that investor-owned utilities install 1,325 megawatts of storage by 2020.

nytimes