New Battery Design Could Help Solar and Wind Power the Grid
04/26/2013
Clean Edge News
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National
Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have designed a low-cost,
long-life “flow” battery that could enable solar and wind energy to
become major suppliers to the electrical grid.
The research, led by Yi Cui, a Stanford associate professor and member
of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, is a
product of the new Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), a
DOE Energy Innovation Hub. Led by Argonne National Laboratory, with
SLAC as major partner, JCESR is one of five such Hubs created by the
Department to accelerate energy research and was established last
November.
While solar and wind make a substantial contribution to the nation’s
energy supply, they also create significant power fluctuations, which
can sometimes exceed the tolerances of the electrical grid. “Flow”
batteries, such as developed by Cui’s group, can smooth those
fluctuations.
Their new flow battery uses a simplified, less-expensive design than
other batteries, which may improve its scalability and
cost-effectiveness. In laboratory tests, it also demonstrated excellent
energy-storage performance through the equivalent of more than 5 ½ years
of daily charge and discharge cycles. The result was reported in the
journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Going forward, Cui's group plans to make a laboratory-scale system to
optimize its energy storage process and identify potential engineering
issues. It also plans to start discussions with potential hosts for a
full-scale field-demonstration unit.
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