[RE-wrenches] FW: Storing the Breeze: New Battery Might Make Wind Power More Reliable / David Biello

[roger dixon]

FYI.

 

Roger Dixon

Certified Wind Site Assessor

Skylands Renewable Energy, LLC

908.337.2057 cell

908.730.6474 fax

roger.dixon at att.net

 

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=storing-the-breeze-new-battery-might-mak
e-wind-power-reliable

 

December 22, 2008 

Storing the Breeze: New Battery Might Make Wind Power More Reliable

Using a massive battery to store electricity generated by wind may make it
more reliable--and cheaper

By David Biello 

  

 

wind-battery

WIND BATTERY: This series of sodium-sulfur batteries will store wind power
in an attempt to both make it more reliable and cheaper.
Courtesy of Xcel Energy

Winter winds howl off the Dakota prairie through Minnesota, turning the
1,100 megawatts worth of wind turbines in Xcel Energy's system in that
state. By 2020, the utility expects to more than triple that amount in a bid
to avoid  <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-war> more polluting
energy sources. But the wind doesn't always blow and, even worse, it often
blows strongest when people aren't using much electricity, like late at
night.

So Xcel Energy, Inc., has become
<http://www.xcelenergy.com/Company/Newsroom/News%20Releases/Pages/Xcel_Energ
y_launches_groundbreaking_wind_to_battery_project.aspx> one of the first
utilities in the U.S. to install a giant battery system in an attempt to
store some of that wind power for later. "Energy storage might help us get
to the point where we can integrate wind better," says Frank Novachek,
director of corporate planning for the Minneapolis-based utility with
customers in Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, the Dakotas,
Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin. "The overall cost of electricity might be
lower by using energy storage."

The energy storage in question-a series of
<http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/products/power/nas/index.html> sodium-sulfur
batteries from Japan's NGK Insulators, Ltd.-can store roughly seven
megawatt-hours of power, meaning the 20 batteries are capable of delivering
roughly one megawatt of electricity almost instantaneously, enough to power
500 average American homes for seven hours. "Over 100 megawatts of this
technology [is] deployed throughout the world," Novachek says. The batteries
"store wind at night and they contract with their utility to put out a
straight line output from that wind farm every day."

That removes one of the big hurdles to even broader adoption of
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=offshore-wind-may-power-the-future>
wind power: so-called intermittency. In other words, the wind doesn't always
blow when you want it to, a problem Texas faced earlier this year when a
drop in wind generation forced cuts in electricity delivery. But with
battery backup, the 11-megawatt wind farm outside Luverne, Minn., can
deliver a set amount of electricity at all times, making it more reliable
or, in industry terms, base-load generation. Plus, the battery effectively
doubles the wind farm's output at any given moment-both the megawatt being
produced by the wind farm itself (that would otherwise have gone to charging
the battery) and the megawatt delivered by the battery.

But it is expensive, costing roughly $3 million per megawatt plus millions
for start-up and testing. "Right now, they're a little too expensive,"
Novachek says. But "it's getting in the ballpark where it looks like the
economics might be there. Testing will help us understand the value."

So far the battery has been through five charging and recharging cycles and
testing will continue through next year, Novachek says. Other utilities,
including the Long Island Power Authority in New York State and American
Electric Power in Ohio, have used similar or the same batteries to better
manage their grids, but this would represent the first
<http://www.sciam.com/report.cfm?id=alternative-energy> battery to store
wind power in the U.S.

The battery is not the only storage experiment Xcel Energy is running: It
has been testing using electricity from wind and
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hydrogen-house> solar installations to
generate hydrogen and then burn the hydrogen in a generator to turn it back
into electricity when as needed. And the utility has paired with the city of
Boulder, Colo., to test
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=will-chevy-volt-be-road-ready-in-time>
plug-in hybrid electric cars as a means of providing electricity during the
day when people are at work and not driving.

"The Midwest is a great [wind] resource and we are strategically placed to
use that and reduce our
<http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=753B8587-C02E-0E98-A8CBE564ADDF
C575> carbon footprint," Novachek notes, by replacing some of the 16
coal-fired plants and 28 natural gas power plants the company now operates.
"New technologies that are out there might really help us get more green
than people had hoped-and energy storage is one of those."

 

 

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