Reynolds has discovered the battery:
Batteries have long been vital to laptops and cellphones. They are increasingly supplying electricity to an unlikely recipient: the power grid itself.
Until recently, large amounts of electricity could not be efficiently stored. Thus, when you turn on the living-room light, power is instantly drawn from a generator.
A new type of a room-size battery, however, may be poised to store energy for the nation’s vast electric grid almost as easily as a reservoir stockpiles water, transforming the way power is delivered to homes and businesses. Compared with other utility-scale batteries plagued by limited life spans or unwieldy bulk, the sodium-sulfur battery is compact, long-lasting and efficient.
Using so-called NaS batteries, utilities could defer for years, and possibly even avoid, construction of new transmission lines, substations and power plants, says analyst Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. They make wind power â?? wildly popular but frustratingly intermittent â?? a more reliable resource. And they provide backup power in case of outages, such as the one that hit New York City last week.
Better batteries are very high on my list of important technologies for the 21st century.
I’ve got a news flash for ya, son… we’ve been doing things like that around here for quite some time. For example, that pair of deep cycle storage batteries on the camper trailer in the driveway, that basically allows you to operate for many days without being hooked up to an AC line. Or for that matter, the uninterruptible power supply sitting on the four deep cycle batteries in my garage, which keep things going in the House of Bit for at least 24 hours after a power failure.
There’s only one problem with this scenario that Glenn projects, of course. That problem is perhaps best illustrated by the hybrid automobile. Consider the hybrid driving around town. It has periods of deceleration, and periods of idle, during which it is either a generating itself or not using any energy at all. Now, consider the hybrid automobile on the freeway, engaged in long haul transportation. It is constantly using energy, and never really has a chance to regenerate itself. That is precisely why over the road mileage and a hybrid is never as good as it is around town.
So what happens in those situations where energy is being used on a continuous basis for long periods in your house, such as, for example, wintertime here in the land of the all-day snow?
Further, our electric old grid, as it now stands, is designed for the peaks and valleys of demand that we now have. Certainly, some reserve in individual buildings will solve some of the peaks and valleys, but that leaves us with a rather steady, high demand, then our electrical grid is simply not designed to provide . The kind of reserve power that you’re talking about here, as a good idea for most homeowners, particularly those in flood plains where for example sump pumps are required. Or where there are health issues and oxygen generators are required, or things along those lines. But I think it’s overstating the case that this is going to help keep us from building additional power plants and electrical grid capacity, in anything but short term timeframes.
In terms of aiding our electrical grid, this is stopgap at best. We are not going to be relieved of the task of adding capacity to our grid. It’s that simple.
Tags: BitsBlog, Electronics, Enviro-Nazis
