Ice Energy, a leading provider of advanced energy storage for the electric utility industry, has completed the installation of a distributed energy storage pilot project, in conjunction with Austin Energy, at the South Austin Recreational Center, located in South-Central Austin.
The Project represents the first installation of Ice Energy’s Ice Bear distributed energy storage technology in the State of Texas.
The concept of storing electricity generated in a utility grid has been tried since the beginning of the power industry. In the U.S., large-scale storage projects flourished in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s as utilities added 18 GWs of pumped hydro facilities to support the rapid build out of the fleet of nuclear power plants across the nation. Nuclear plants run best at higher power ratings, so pumping water in these hydro plants presented ideal off-peak loads during nights and weekends when customer demands are lowest. This method of grid storage has been improved during the past two decades, and today these plants provide more than 2 percent of the total capacity of the national grid.
via Taking Grid Energy Storage to the Edge – Utility Automation/Electric Light & Power.
Xtreme Power has been pulling the veil away from its decades-old energy storage technology over the past six months or so, getting attention for claims of a “chemical capacitor” that can beat lithium ion batteries in terms of energy storage, efficiency, cycle life and cost. Now the Kyle, Texas-based startup has a big contract to test its technology: a 10-megawatt storage system meant to back up a 30-megawatt wind farm planned for the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
Fuel cells, which decades ago powered the moon mission, are quietly making their way into businesses and homes, and some see them as the future of power production.
Instead of burning fuel to make heat that then drives a turbine, fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction similar to that inside a battery to make electricity.
via Fueling the future: Fuel cells show promise – SignOnSanDiego.com.
Creating a revolution in the way energy is produced and shared, distributed solar energy is one of the top clean energy topics of the day.
Chicago utility company ComEd (an arm of the energy giant Exelon Corporation) has a new pilot project in this field that will outfit 100 Chicago-area homes with solar photovoltaic panels and “at least 50 of those with ’smart’ meters, net metering, battery backup and a grid-tied status that enables them to send unused electricity from their solar energy systems back to the grid.”
via Chicago’s New Distributed Solar Energy Pilot Project : CleanTechnica.
A competitive America is also America that finally has a smart energy policy. We know there’s no silver bullet here. We understand that to reduce our dependence on oil and the damage caused by climate change, we're going to need more production in the short term, we're going to need more efficiency, and we need more incentives for clean energy.
And already, the Recovery Act has allowed us to jump-start the clean energy industry in America -– an investment that will lead to 720,000 clean energy jobs by the year 2012. To take just one example, the United States used to make less than 2 percent of the world’s advanced batteries for hybrid cars. By 2015, we’ll have enough capacity to make up to 40 percent of these batteries.
via Prof. Obama’s lecture on business to the Business Roundtable | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times.
Intel researchers are exploring nanoscale materials as an alternative to create ultracapacitors with a greater energy density than today’s Li-ion batteries. If successful, the new materials could be mass produced in volumes to power systems ranging from mobile devices to electric vehicles—even smart grid storage units.
Back in September 2009 I blogged about six rules that tell you when you have a Smart Grid. The third rule is: You know you have a Smart Grid when the transmission and distribution portions of the grid are optimized for distributed energy generation/storage. This rule becomes reality when microgrids are ubiquitous. The Smart Grid Dictionary defines a microgrid as: “A small power system that includes self-contained generation, transmission, distribution, sensors, energy storage, and energy management software with a seamless and synchronized connection to a utility power system but can operate independently as an island from that system.”
Beacon Power Corporation (Nasdaq: BCON), a leading provider of advanced products and services to support a more stable, reliable and efficient electricity grid, today announced that it plans to hire approximately 50 new employees this year at its Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, headquarters, as it ramps up production of its grid-scale flywheel energy storage systems.
A smart-grid project in Ohio will test whether the electricity business will follow the history of computing, with storage moving from center to the edge of the network.
Start-up International Battery on Monday said that it has been chosen to supply lithium ion batteries for a community energy storage pilot project run by utility AEP set to go online by the middle of this year.
The storage units will be about the size of pad-mounted transformers, the roughly refrigerator-size boxes that step down high-voltage current from transmission lines for local service, said Ake Almgren, the CEO of International Battery.
via Lithium batteries tapped for community storage | Green Tech – CNET News.
The Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) and Ice Energy this week announced an agreement to develop one of the first utility-scale energy storage projects in the U.S. The 53 megawatt (MW) project, to be implemented by SCPPA member utilities throughout Southern California is expected to shift as much as 64 gigawatt-hours of on-peak electrical consumption to off-peak periods every year, reducing exposure to costly peak power and improving the reliability of the electrical grid.
via SCPPA & Ice Energy To Develop 53-MW of Energy Storage – Renewable Energy World.
With the fourth quarter of 2009 now behind us, it appears clear that the field of green technology — renewable energy and energy storage systems, energy efficiency technology, smart grid infrastructure and the underlying information technology to make it all work — is likely to end 2009 with the biggest venture capital haul of any industry sector.
A fundamental idea taught to electrical engineering students is that energy may be stored, but not power. And this has been seen as a primary obstacle to ensuring sufficient peak power supply, even when the installed power capacity can easily handle non-peak conditions.
via The Hindu : Sci-Tech / Science : A smart idea to supply power.
From the most expensive vehicles to the smallest consumer devices, batteries will play a starring role in this generation of smart products—and it’s one of the key investment areas that Cynthia Artin will be covering in her Smart Money column in the next few months. Better battery performance is a clear requirement for mass market adoption of plug-in electric vehicles and smart energy storage for home and enterprise customers.
via The ABCs of Smart Product Innovation for 2010: Four Core Criteria for Success.
There is no reason at all to limit our concepts of grid energy storage and buffers to electricity and batteries—and many opportunities open up if we do not.
Smart Grids and Distributed Energy Create opportunities for Diversity in Energy Storage
Grids, and microgrids, have two approaches to storing energy. They can store it in something that produces electricity, or they can store it in any format that provides a service to its customers. The closer we get to the end users of energy, the more options we have to store energy. The most critical short term goal of smart grids might be to transfer as many incentives for energy storage to the end nodes of the grid as possible as soon as possible.
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