In Electricity Energy Storage Technology Options – A White Paper Primer on Applications, Costs and Benefits – a white paper by EPRI; the Electric Power Research Institute finds that if regions in need of energy storage can defer transmission investments by investing in energy storage instead, then it can pay to invest in storage instead, depending on the costs.
If you’ve ever blown up a balloon and let it go flying across the room, you’ve got the basic idea behind a new technology for storing energy from wind power: use compressed air. ARPA-E, the federal agency charged with providing seed money for transformative energy technology, is so impressed with … [continued]
Yesterday Attorney General Jerry Brown announced a completely new kind of renewable energy legislation, introduced by State Assembly member Nancy Skinner (D) – designed to add more renewable energy storage to the grid. [social_buttons] You’ve heard of Renewable Energy Standards. These are (state level only, so far) rules that require … [continued]
A once-in-a-generation shift in U.S. science is being spurred by the Obama administration’s push to solve the nation’s energy problems, in a massive federal program that rivals the Manhattan Project. [social_buttons] This summary comes, not from just another renewable energy blogger like myself, overwhelmed by the gushing hose of news … [continued]
Pacific Gas & Electricity has won one of the Obama Administration’s 16 advanced grid awards totaling $620 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds, aimed at making more renewable energy available to the grid. PG&E’s $25 million award will fund initial work to see if California can store … [continued]
Storage is needed to harvest the full yield available from intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar. One of the options is compressed-air storage; till now only possible in underground caverns. But SustainX Energy Solutions; a Dartmouth College start-up that got $4 million in VC funding from Polaris Venture … [continued]
Coal power is not base-load electricity by itself. To enable coal to reliably deliver electric power, it took the creation of an entire other national infrastructure; the trans-continental railroad system.
Without the unceasing rail-car-load delivery, every 12 hours, on the hour, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year, of every next 12-hour-supply of fuel for the fire; the fire would go out, the water wouldn’t boil, the steam wouldn’t rise, the turbine wouldn’t turn; the next 12 hours of electricity wouldn’t be made. The fire must never go out.
As PG&E ramps up renewable power in response to the California RPS requirement that it get 33% of its electricity from renewables by 2020; it has been exploring ways to add that much renewable power to the grid while smoothing out the ups and downs of wind energy, which often … [continued]
Recently, MIT discovered a revolutionary method for solar energy storage. And now, less than a month later, a method for wind power storage is being explored. Earlier today, Public Service Enterprise Group Global announced that it is joining with Michael Nakhamkin to create a company called Energy Storage and Power … [continued]
