Energy Storage: Will We Find the Holy Grail?

We'd all like to see a world powered mostly by renewables. But is it possible? With the right planning, we can develop a lot of intermittent renewables without storage. At some point, however, we'll need both short-term and long-term storage technologies to help stabilize the grid.

 Reader Comments:


richard-lucy-11251
February 26, 2010
Having listened to the podcast I realise that there is a need for a storage system that is economic and efficient.
I have worked and worried about a method for the past 20 years. It is unbelieveabley simple yet because it is not high tech it is disregarded.
This involves offshore wind turbines not producing electricity as they turn but mechanically winding buoys down below the water. These are allowed to rise and turn generators when the energy is wanted.
One set of blades can store all the energy on a quantity of buoys surrounding the mast, if in deep water it becomes even more efficient in initial costs as each buoy has greater vertical travel.
These buoys can be made from used tires formed into cylinders.
With gearing, even a light breeze can be utilised to add to the stored energy.
What is put into store is virtually what can be recovered, the only losses being in gearing.
As regards cost, all that is needed is winding gear, cables, a generator, firm sea anchors and a quantity of used tires.
Little actual construction is needed on site, merely a firmly established mast and a quantity of firm seabed anchors. The tire buoys can be floated into place and secured to the cables. The making of the buoys is not even high tech, having done it myself I can show how it is done.

If anyone wants to follow this up please let them get in touch with me. I hold no patent but am happy to offer the idea to the world.

Dick Lucy
richard@hamsterbaskets.co.uk
 

gregrowe
February 26, 2010
A new energy storage system has been recently developed using a (phase change material). A company called Elcal Research has developed a system where they take off peak electric, wind, solar and store the energy as heat. As needed the energy is released using a heat pump. This is being done currently using ice by various companies for cooling very effectively. Their system can be used for heating or cooling by reversing the heat pump their material freezes at 78 degrees. The amount of storage is tremendous at the phase change. They say the payback will be short and best of all it works, I've seen their prototype I'm amazed. Check them out at Elcal research.com
 

david-doty-31004
February 26, 2010
WindFuels are coming!

Storage is critical to growth of renewables, and fortunately a much better solution than most have yet heard about is coming. We've shown that it will soon be practical to make all the standard fuels we need (diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, alcohols...) at competitive prices from CO2, water, and off-peak wind energy. These fuels will be completely carbon neutral, while most biofuels are only 15% carbon-neutral. The tank-component cost of storing energy in standard liquid fuels is less than 0.1% the cost of storing energy in batteries, compressed air, molten salts, or most other options that have been widely advocated.

Several other companies have come out with related concepts over the past few years, but they've been too inefficient and too expensive. Doty Energy keeps piling on the needed technical breakthroughs to allow fuels synthesized from CO2 and off-peak wind energy (hence, WindFuels) to be cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels as long as oil is above $50/bbl in some cases, or above $80/bbl in all cases.

Four peer-reviewed technical papers on WindFuels are available for download at the DotyEnergy website, and four more papers will be presented at the spring ASME ES conference in May. This is the kind of transformational breakthrough the DOE and investors need to take a look at.
 

tim-gard-25916
February 26, 2010
Why do we spend so much time trying to develop that that has already been done? If you simply pump water into an elevated site such as a manmade reservoir you can generate electricity with common phase matching systems that have been in use for 100 years. Wind mills or solar panels would provide the pump energy in a DC state during access times. DC provides better torque than AC anyway, so phasing this energy at this point would be a waste of energy. A few elevated acres and a hydro generator and all storage problems are solved. After all these hydro generators, according to the hydro engineers operate at over 90% efficiency. But this does not go in line with you guys so you should dismiss it right away.
 

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