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Grid Batteries for Wind, Solar Find First Customers
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534096/grid-batteries-for-wind-solar-find-first-customers/[font face=Serif][font size=5]Grid Batteries for Wind, Solar Find First Customers[/font]
[font size=4]Niche applications will help advanced power-grid-battery technology.[/font]
By Kevin Bullis on January 8, 2015
[font size=3]Several new types of battery, each capable of cost-effectively storing the energy output from a wind or solar farm, are finally being hooked up to power grids. The so-called grid batteries could lower the cost of renewable energy by eliminating the intermittency problem that arises when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
On Wednesday, Aquion Energy, a Pittsburgh-based startup that makes one such battery, announced that the technology will allow a small electricity grid in Hawaii to run around the clock on solar power.
Conventional batteries would be too expensive or unreliable to use for grid-scale storage. The new batteries coming online use materials and manufacturing processes that not only lower costs but should also allow them to last for decades (see “Storing the Sun” and “A Battery to Prop Up Renewable Energy Hits the Market”).
Similar grid-battery projects are taking off in California, propelled by new regulations designed to accommodate shifts in renewable energy (see “A Battery Made of Iron Could Improve the Economics of Solar and Wind Power”). Last month, Ambri, a startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that makes batteries out of molten metal, announced that it would connect its batteries to the grid for the first time later this year in a series of pilot projects in Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, and Alaska (see “Ambri’s Better Battery”).
…[/font][/font]
[font size=4]Niche applications will help advanced power-grid-battery technology.[/font]
By Kevin Bullis on January 8, 2015
[font size=3]Several new types of battery, each capable of cost-effectively storing the energy output from a wind or solar farm, are finally being hooked up to power grids. The so-called grid batteries could lower the cost of renewable energy by eliminating the intermittency problem that arises when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
On Wednesday, Aquion Energy, a Pittsburgh-based startup that makes one such battery, announced that the technology will allow a small electricity grid in Hawaii to run around the clock on solar power.
Conventional batteries would be too expensive or unreliable to use for grid-scale storage. The new batteries coming online use materials and manufacturing processes that not only lower costs but should also allow them to last for decades (see “Storing the Sun” and “A Battery to Prop Up Renewable Energy Hits the Market”).
Similar grid-battery projects are taking off in California, propelled by new regulations designed to accommodate shifts in renewable energy (see “A Battery Made of Iron Could Improve the Economics of Solar and Wind Power”). Last month, Ambri, a startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that makes batteries out of molten metal, announced that it would connect its batteries to the grid for the first time later this year in a series of pilot projects in Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, and Alaska (see “Ambri’s Better Battery”).
…[/font][/font]
