Frequent commenter Brian McGowan sent me this delightful little article, for those of you who, like me, thought that coal mines could serve no useful purpose in the context of 21st Century energy.
Category: Energy Storage
Battery Prices Falling Through the Floor
If you’re wondering what will push battery prices down to previously unforeseeable levels, look no further. Up until recently, sushi has had far better storage technology than electricity, but that’s clearly no longer the case. As described in the article …
Thermal Energy Storage
Yes, we’re continuing to make great progress in all aspects of energy storage via batteries, most importantly, in terms of cost-effectiveness. Yet it’s hard to conceive of a time at which batteries can compete with the storage of heat energy.
Energy Storage: The Latest in Supercapacitors
When modern-age electric vehicles first became “a thing” about 10 years ago, supercapacitors were a frequent topic of discussion, due to their value in delivering large amounts of power—far more energy per unit than batteries could provide. As it turns …
Tagged with: energy storage, graphene infinitesimally thin (one atom thick) form of graphite, Latest in Supercapacitors, lithium-ion batteries have come to offer acceptable power density, lowering the costs of generating transmitting and storing energy, modern-age electric vehicles, PBS’s NOVA, political garbage provides a headwind for renewable energy
Energy Storage Is Changing the Entire Energy/Transportation Landscape
Here’s a story about two very progressive companies dealing with 21st Century energy: Tesla and Sierra Nevada (a top-notch beer brewery). The essence is that Tesla has installed a fairly large battery storage system, apparently to lower energy costs for …
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Making Batteries from Carbon Dioxide: An Idea That Will Almost Certainly Never Come To Fruition
Here’s another example of a phenomenon so plentiful in cleantech: it’s doable, but there are no economic reasons that it will ever be done. It’s a battery system that is built by taking carbon dioxide, perhaps from a point source …
Cool New Idea in Wind Turbines
Here’s a new idea in the quest to reduce or remove the variability of wind energy: an integrated water reservoir, making use of the huge watertight tower. This creates a (small) pumped hydro energy storage solution without the elevation change. …
Breakthrough in Energy Storage from the University of Wisconsin
Here’s an exciting development that lies squarely on the intersection of the main problems we face in making the migration from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Combining solar energy with storage, it’s a device that converts incoming solar energy directly …
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Tagged with: combining solar energy with storage, converts income solar energy directly into chemical energy, electrolyte flow battery, high voltage power transmission, integrating huge volumes of solar and wind, integrating large amounts of energy from variable resources, migration from fossil fuels to renewable energy
The Energy Storage Problem
2GreenEnergy megasupporter Cameron Atwood just sent me this from G.K. Surya Prakash (pictured), a chemistry professor at the University of Southern California: “Earth doesn’t have an energy problem. We have an energy storage problem.” There is no doubt that the advent …
Tagged with: 2GreenEnergy megasupporter, Earth doesn't have an energy problem, Energy Storage Problem, high-voltage energy transmission over vast distances, integration of variable resources, liquid transportation fuels, migration from fossil fuels, overbuilding the solar and wind infrastructure, we have an energy storage problem
This Report on Flow Batteries Will Make You Smile
A reader from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, CA, a group that’s heavily committed to sustainability, writes: For an emotional uplift check out the flow battery progress sponsored by ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Administration-Energy).
