San Jose State University Offers Energy Storage Courses

 San Jose State University Offers Energy Storage Courses  Batteries, Energy, Energy Storage, Research and Development (R&D)  No Responses »
Apr 082013
 

San Jose State University will start offering battery technology courses this summer. It is called “battery university”.

Chemistry laboratory, University of Sydney - From Sydney Uni on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sydneyuni/

Chemistry laboratory, University of Sydney – Image obtained with thanks from Sydney Uni on Flickr.

The significance of energy storage to hybrid and electric cars, alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, and nuclear is so significant that the success of these industries is heavily affected by the viability of energy storage technology.

I mentioned nuclear because nuclear power plants are not really adjustable, and hence cannot respond to fluctuations of electricity demand, although they can provide a constant power supply all day, which is a good trait.

As the energy storage industry grows with the wind, solar, and electric vehicle industries, the need for trained energy storage technology specialists grows. According to a New York Times article, California (United States) has about 40 battery companies, but they can hardly find a work force.

This is only one reason why training is needed, though. People who are interested in energy storage technology can now go to school for it specifically and the knowledge gained will help them to innovate and push the boundaries of wind, solar, hybrid, and electric car technology.

The more innovators there are, the merrier!

Source: New York Times

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 Posted by Nicholas on April 8, 2013  Tagged with: , , , ,

Texan Wind Farm Gets World’s Largest Battery Bank

 Texan Wind Farm Gets World’s Largest Battery Bank  Batteries, Energy, Energy Storage, Renewable Energy, Wind Energy, Zero Emissions  No Responses »
Apr 032013
 

The Notrees wind farm of Texas has now been equipped with what was called “the world’s largest energy storage system”. It is a 36 MW bank of batteries, which equivalent to the power consumption of 12,000 houses.

Sayda wind farm in cloudy weather.

Sayda Wind Park – Obtained with thanks from Eclipse.sx on Wikimedia Commons.

Duke Energy Renewables, a part of Duke Energy, is the company that owns the Notrees wind farm and chose to have Xtreme Energy, an Austin-based company equip this particular wind farm with the batteries because it is large and spacious (wind farms are always large and spacious, but, apparently, this one is particularly spacious).

The wind energy storage industry is in it’s infancy, and several years ago, there was almost no wind energy storage in use anywhere. The first few projects that store wind energy on a large scale are important proof-of-concept to prospective wind farm developers, power plant operators, the Department of Energy, and everyone else that is uncertain about the viability of wind energy storage.

This is a project that received $22 million of funding from the U.S Department of Energy (a matching grant), translating to a cost of $0.61 per watt of energy the system can provide.

Although energy storage systems, including this one, are very expensive, they do have to be tested, and the need for them is growing. Even traditional coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants are not adjustable enough. Nuclear power plants are virtually nonadjustable, natural gas and coal plants take 3 hours to start, and cannot respond to sudden changes of electricity demand.

At night, when electricity demand drops, they still produce as much electricity as they did at daytime, and pass the cost of that surplus electricity, which goes to waste, onto consumers. Batteries like these help all of these power plants to store the surplus energy so that it can be used to meet increased electricity demand during peak hours (electricity demand often peaks in the afternoon, partly due to air conditioner usage).

Almost all power plants can benefit from energy storage, as they are not virtually uncontrollable (except hydroelectric power plants), and this battery is not only an important test, but it also helps to back up the electricity grid in the event of power shortages.

Source: Duke Energy

 Posted by Nicholas on April 3, 2013  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Solar-Powered EV Network Unveiled at Balboa Park

 Solar-Powered EV Network Unveiled at Balboa Park  Batteries, Cars, Electric Vehicles, Energy Storage, Solar Energy, Sustainable Technology, Transportation, Zero Emissions  No Responses »
Nov 292012
 

Smart City San Diego, with the mayor, unveiled their solar-powered electric vehicle project at Balboa Park.

Video obtained with thanks from  on Youtube.

In this case, solar panels directly charge the vehicles, rather than the traditional net metering approach, which involves charging the vehicles with power from the local utility company, and then offsetting that by supplying the electricity generated by the solar panels back to the electricity grid.

So these vehicles draw electricity from the solar panel, not the electricity grid.

The solar panels generate up to 90 kW of electricity, which can power up to 59 homes, assuming that the homes consume an average of 1.53 kW of electricity hourly (this fluctuates, but this is what all those spikes and dips averages out to).

This could power up to 72 typical American homes which consume an average of 1.25 kW hourly, and use 900 kWh of electricity monthly.

Source: Mediaroom.com

 Posted by Nicholas on November 29, 2012  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

There’s Nothing Sweeter than a Battery Made of Sugar

 There’s Nothing Sweeter than a Battery Made of Sugar  Batteries, Energy, Energy Storage, Sustainable Technology  No Responses »
Sep 302012
 

Researchers at the Tokyo University of Science, led by Shinichi Komaba developed a battery made partly of sucrose-derived carbon, as well as sodium. These sugar batteries store 20% more energy than batteries made with traditional non-sugar derived carbon.

Sugar Cubes. Photo obtained with thanks from Uwe Hermann on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uwehermann/

The significance of this technology lies in the fact that it is made of the abundant, cheap, and renewable materials sucrose and sodium.

Lithium-ion batteries are made of 1.5% to 3% lithium, and, while lithium is rare in its pure state, it is obtained from more abundant compounds such as lithium carbonate and lithium chloride.

The availability of lithium is currently not an issue, but, it is a metal, and most metals are finite. I should add that countries which are unable to obtain lithium because of embargoes with lithium-producing countries would need battery technology as universal as this because sodium and sugar can be obtained by everyone in the world. Sodium and sugar do occur naturally everywhere.

Read more about the sustainability of lithium-ion batteries here.

Source: Discovery

 Posted by Nicholas on September 30, 2012

MIT: It’s Official: Wind Energy Can Be Stored Cheaply

 MIT: It’s Official: Wind Energy Can Be Stored Cheaply  Energy, Energy Storage, Renewable Energy, Zero Emissions  No Responses »
Mar 262012
 

According to research conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, renewable sources of energy such as the sun and wind could become economically competitive with traditional sources of energy via the use of “liquid batteries”.

Sayda Wind Park – Obtained with thanks from Eclipse.sx on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eclipse.sx

This is the first time that I have heard MIT announce that they officially have the answer to the solar and wind intermittency problem. They made many announcements in the past of inventions of theirs that could potentially be cheaper than traditional energy storage systems such as the lithium-ion or lead-acid batteries in use today, but never this.

Primer: The sun does not always shine, the wind does not always blow, wind speeds fluctuate, and the amount of sunlight we receive varies due to clouds. According to the United States Department of Energy 2011 Annual Energy Outlook, the average cost of wind power in the U.S is only 9.7 cents per kWh (kilowatt-hour) of electricity that wind farms generate.

What this translates to: Wind power’s problem is no longer the cost to generate it. It is now mainly intermittency. Fluctuations in the amount of power generated by a wind farm can be compensated for by adjusting other hydroelectric, or fossil fueled natural gas, nuclear, or coal power plants. If a wind farm generates more than necessary, other power plants can be turned down to compensate for that, and back up again when there is less than enough wind power available.

The ability of fossil fueled power plants to adjust is very limited because they take long to make major adjustments in power production and energy storage enables wind farms to independently supply power without the help of other power plants.

This can be achieved with lithium-ion or lead-acid batteries, but these are too expensive. The cost issue associated with lead-acid batteries is because of their short lifespan and and inefficiency. They have to be replaced frequently, waste too much electricity, and this cost of these adds up.

According to MIT, liquid batteries are inexpensive and have a longer lifespan than traditional batteries. The three materials contained in the liquid batteries each settle in separate layers due to the difference in their densities, which, in this case, is a good thing. They have to be separate to work correctly.

This project was conducted with the importance of material availability and abundance in mind. All three layers of the battery materials used are abundant and inexpensive.

“We explored many chemistries,” Sadoway says. The negative electrode (anode) is in the top layer and is made of magnesium, the middle layer, which is the electrolyte consists of a salt mixture containing magnesium chloride, and the bottom layer which is the positive electrode (cathode) is made of antimony.

This battery operates at a temperature of 700 °C, which is 1,292 °F.

Discharging: The battery generates an electric current as each magnesium atom (this is in the negative electrode) loses two electrons, then they are magnesium ions which travel to the other antimony electrode. The magnesium ions then reacquire two more electrons and become magnesium again because of this. This causes an alloy to form with the antimony.

Charging: When the battery is supplied with an electric current, this process is reversed and the electrons are driven out of the antimony electrode, and back to the magnesium electrode.

As I say sometimes, batteries do not store electricity, they generate it. When you charge a battery,  you supply it with an electric current that drives a chemical reaction of which the one mentioned above is an example.  You reverse that process to make the battery generate electricity.

Source: MIT News Office

 Posted by Nicholas on March 26, 2012  Tagged with: ,

IBM Invents EV Battery that Facilitates 500 Mile Range

 IBM Invents EV Battery that Facilitates 500 Mile Range  Energy, Energy Storage, Transportation, Zero Emissions  No Responses »
Jan 192012
 

Electric Tesla Roadster - Obtained with thanks from e-connected on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/e-connected/. Click image for the wallpaper sized 2298 x 1535 pixel version.

IBM discovered a new electrode for lithium-air batteries, and it facilitates driving electric vehicles 500 miles after each charge.

Lithium-air battery technology is recent, but not new. It does have the potential to store a significant amount of energy in a very lightweight package. This is otherwise known as a high gravimetric energy density. Gravimetric energy density is measured in Wh/kg of batteries, or watt-hours per kilogram.

Lithium-air batteries use carbon as their positive electrode (unlike typical li-ion batteries that use oxides of metals such as lithium cobalt oxide), and that carbon reacts with oxygen in the air to generate electricity. Batteries do not store electricity, they generate it.

IBM decided to start work on these batteries due to their potential and discovered that the oxygen in the air is reacting with both the carbon electrode mentioned, ans also with the battery’s electrolyte. This ruins the electrolyte.

So, physicist Winfried Wilcke and his colleague Alessandro Curioni at IBM’s Zurich research labs in Switzerland used the Blue Gene supercomputer to simulate extremely detailed models of the reactions using alternative electrolytes until they finally found a more suitable one, which is confidential.

Winfried Wilcke said: “We now have one which looks very promising,”, but there are several research prototypes t hat have been demonstrated.

Batteries with a higher energy density enable hybrid-electric and electric vehicles to drive further per charge because they are lighter. Lighter batteries weigh down the vehicle less, therefore, the vehicle will be lighter overall and require less energy per mile it travels, conserving the energy in the batteries. This translates to more energy available for driving. Another way to look at it is: Each kWh (kilowatt-hour) of energy takes you further.

A greater energy density also means that fewer batteries can be used to achieve the same range that you would using ordinary batteries, which is usually less than 100 miles in ordinary cars such as the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt. The Tesla Roadster uses many batteries which enable it to achieve a 244 mile range per charge.

Apart from that, fewer batteries cost less money. So you can either increase the vehicle’s range, or cut the cost by using fewer batteries. I should also add that lighter vehicles are faster and handle better.

So, as you probably realized now: A significantly improved energy density really can have a far reaching impact on vehicles.

Typical lithium-ion batteries such as the lithium cobalt and lithium-iron phosphate types have a much a lower energy density, and as a result of this, electric vehicles powered by them often have a driving range of less than (but not limited to) 100 (160 km) miles per charge. They are, however, more practical than older lithium-air batteries that are unreliable due to chemical instability.

The hope is to have a full-scale battery prototype operational by 2013 and commercial batteries around 2020.

Source: New Scientist

 Posted by Nicholas on January 19, 2012  Tagged with:

Algae Gives Scientists Idea of How to Improve Li-ion Batteries

 Algae Gives Scientists Idea of How to Improve Li-ion Batteries  Energy Storage  1 Response »
Sep 102011
 

Traditional lithium-ion battery. Image obtained with thanks from Kristoferb on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kristoferb

Lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries can achieve an energy density of 1,000 watt-hours/kg which is ten times greater than that of traditional li-ion batteries. This means that 1 kg of lithium-ion batteries could store 1,000 watt-hours (Wh) of energy, compared to a traditional one which only stores a little more or less than 100 watt-hours. To achieve this energy density, years ago, researchers successfully developed one with a silicon anode, but there is a problem with this design:

Due to the fact that silicon is brittle, when the silicon anode is absorbing lithium ions, it expands, and when releasing them, it shrinks. This recurrent expansion and shrinkage causes it to crack and malfunction, resulting in an unacceptably short lifespan.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Clemson University have discovered that using alginate, which is a substance obtained from brown algae enables them to construct these batteries in such a way that they can withstand the expansion and contraction. This new battery stores 8 times as much as traditional li-ion batteries, which is still a noteworthy improvement.

Alginate happens to be used as a binding and gelling agent for other applications.

Potential benefits of this new technology include: Lightweight and long range electric vehicles that also perform better, laptop computers could enjoy a longer battery life provided that these batteries are as small as I think they are, and lighter portable electronics in general. Remember that the energy density per kg is how much energy can be stored in a battery that weighs a kg.

I will keep an eye open to see where this new technology goes. Follow me on Twitter in case I provide an update pertaining to the status of this technology.

Source: Technology Review

 Posted by Nicholas on September 10, 2011

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