Sustainable Electricity
You use it
or you lose it or you store it... or you make it yourself.
Battery
back-up is a good place to start. The importance of saving and
conserving water is a new reality that we will have to embrace until
some time in the future we can make it in abundance. The same goes for
electricity. Leaner cleaner technology will be more eco friendly, and
excess electricity unless it is being stored for later is going down
the drain.
You use it or you lose it or you store it... or you make it with solar
wind or you can peddle.
Like re-cycled water, we could direct
unused energy into a battery.
Up until now there has only been pumped
storage hydro to store electricity
- at around
80% efficiency the on-demand advantage outways the energy losses, but
it's a very expensive operation that usually takes years
to accomplish. Basically, pumped storage acts like a
giant battery storing the energy for use
later.
So much of todays technology like computers and iPods depend upon
batteries, and we are very familiar with how they lose their
power and re-charging affects battery life - their pretty heavy and not
so eco friendly. I found the
biggest battery in the world in Alaska with BESS 27
MegaWatts
for 15
minutes or so which is enough time to keep balanced the grid. BESS
balances the load by filling in the 15 minute gap - to start backup
after failure - thus maintaining a
good steady supply.
If a renewable battery storage was found for electricity that was
more convenient than hydro, cheaper to
make quicker to build but was relatively clean like hydro - the usually
wasted energy becomes easier to
manage, easier to save, and
somewhat "extra" because we
can use it later - we save energy overnight to use it the next day when
we need it most.
So
off I went around
the world only to find it in my backyard.
I'm a great believer in the networked systems like the internet. The
design maintains there is a path that will get you to your destination
even if whole chunks are missing. I think the same can be done for
electricity and water.
Supplying electricity
for 15 minutes and then requiring a re-charge doesn't seem like much
benefit, but in the
Canadian climate, it does eleviate everything from
freezing over. It doesn't compare to hydro which could supply 8 hours
of continuous electricity but it does herald a new concept of
infrastructure.
Networked systems like the internet are built upon many small computers
and together they are very large in total capacity. It is
the same for electricity and water. Individuals who have tanks that
collect rain or recycle water form the beginnings of the mitachondria
infrastructure of the future.
The
old iron and acid makes a last gasp for supremacy, but the flow cell is
taking over.
The Vanadium Bromide
Redox
Battery from the University Of New South Wales.
From what I understand, it is
close to 100%
rechargeable and
recyclable - sounds very Electric Eco to me.
- Redox Flow Batteries are only
batteries that
allow BOTH electrical recharge and
“instant” recharge by mechanical refueling.
- Spent solutions can be recharged
overnight with off-peak power.
- Eliminates need for new power
stations to
meet increased load from electric cars.
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VRB
Vanadium Redox Flow
Battery
An Historical Overview of the
Vanadium Redox Flow Battery Development at the University of New South
Wales, Australia
by
Maria Skyllas-Kazacos
School of Chemical Engineering & Industrial Chemistry,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, AUSTRALIA 2052
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FLOW CELLS
The Redox Flow Cell is an
electrochemical system which allows energy to be stored in two
solutions containing different redox couples with electrochemical
potentials sufficiently separated from each other to provide an
electromotive force to drive the oxidation-reduction reactions needed
to charge and discharge the cell. Unlike conventional batteries, the
redox flow cell stores energy in the solutions, so that the capacity of
the system is determined by the size of the electrolyte tanks, while
the system power is determined by the size of the cell stacks. The
redox flow cell is therefore more like a rechargeable fuel cell than a
battery.
http://www.ceic.unsw.edu.au/centers/vrb/
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Batteries for Load
leveling and distributed power systems.
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2 VRB load-levelling
installations in Japan:
• 200 kW/800 kWh VRB at
Kashima-Kita Power Station
• 500 kW/1 MW VRB at Kansai Power Station (built by SEI)
• Energy Efficiency of 80%
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2003
Tasmania
commissions storage system
Pinnacle VRB, a VRB
Power Systems subsidiary,
announced that it has commissioned the King Island Vanadium Redox
Battery Energy Storage System (VRB/EES) at a Hydro Tasmania site in
Australia.
The VRB/EES will smooth the short
term output variations in wind
generators and customer loads while providing frequency and voltage
control. It will also implement a system of load shifting for a
diesel-wind hybrid generation system.
King Island, a remote Island off
the south coast of Australia
operates
five wind turbines ranging from 250 to 850 kW along with four 1.5 MW
diesel generators. These units supply power to local residents and form
part of Hydro Tasmania's Renewable Energy Expansion Project.
-
To date, flow batteries have
mainly been used to assist with load
levelling for substations and in buildings or in small isolated storage
systems. Using them as part of King Island's overall power grid will be
the first use of the technology in large-scale remote power supply
systems and an excellent opportunity to showcase Australian innovative
research and development.
The project also
incorporates the investigation of demand side
management to optimise energy efficiency and reduce system peaks.
The projected savings from
the batteries and overall control
system amount to 2800MWh per annum. Hydro Tasmania anticipates that, in
addition to substantially reducing the island's dependence on diesel,
the project will cut greenhouse emissions by a total of 2000 tonnes of
CO2 per annum when fully operational.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/renewable/recp/enabling/three.html
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