Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Energy Storage Industry Grows To Integrate Wind, Solar

By Robert Crowe, Contributor. Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World.

Grid-scale energy storage is gaining momentum as batteries, flywheels and compressed air systems begin proving they can regulate frequency and ancillary services with the same efficiency of "spinning reserves" from fossil fuel-fired power plants.

1 comment:

  1. "Pumped-hydro, which accounts for 20 GW of the country's energy storage, can provide 1,000-MW storage systems for $100 per kilowatt-hour, according to The New York Times. It requires massive reservoirs that cost more than $1 billion and take years to construct with ideal geography and abundant water resources. That pretty much rules out the arid Southwest,"

    How true is this statement? If we're talking backup for wind/solar how many hours of hydro storage/generation would we really need?

    We're not talking weeks of storage, only hours.

    Furthermore, we've got something like 80,000 existing dams in the US. We use only 2,500 for power generation. Many others are going to have the head needed for pump-up and be reasonably close to transmission lines. All that would be needed is a pump/turbine and a lower reservoir.

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