{"id":7538,"date":"2017-04-07T16:48:47","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T15:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7538"},"modified":"2017-04-07T16:48:47","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T15:48:47","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-energy-storage-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7538","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – energy storage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kraftwerk_Huntorf_innen\"<\/a>Energy storage gets talked about a lot at the moment.\u00a0 When this subject is mentioned its almost always Li ion batteries.\u00a0 There are other options for energy storage but these are tending to get forgotten about.\u00a0 There is pumped storage of course but there are a also a variety of mechanical systems.\u00a0 These include flywheels (there is I believe a small demonstration scheme in New York) and compressed air systems.\u00a0 One of these has been operating in Germany since the 1970’s with 290MWp capacity and another smaller 110MWp in the US since the 1990’s.\u00a0 Both seem to have operated without any problems.\u00a0 It would be useful not to put all our eggs in the Li ion basket just in case there is not enough lithium for cars and other uses.<\/p>\n

The technology is fairly straightforward.\u00a0 A bit like a cycle tyre you use excess energy to compress air (to about the same pressure as a tyre) and store it under pressure, when you want energy you let the air flow out through turbines.\u00a0 There are few drawbacks though.\u00a0 If you ever pump a tyre up you will know the pump gets very hot.\u00a0 This is because the molecules of air are colliding more and more with each other as the pressure increases.\u00a0 As you will remember when you let the air out the opposite effect occurs.\u00a0 The valve gets very cold. \u00a0 This hot\/cold dichotomy is regarded as a problem I think since the turbines work both ways and the kit cannot be expected to withstand extremes of temperature.\u00a0 The air is usually cooled on compression and then warmed on decompression.\u00a0\u00a0 In principle the heat can be recovered from the compression phase and used in the second – either directly or indirectly and thereby raise the efficiency of the process.\u00a0 Another drawback is implied by the above photo of the German plant, its not pretty, basically it looks like a huge warehouse.\u00a0 The energy density is relatively low of such systems so it makes sense only to build very large schemes- hence extenuating the aesthetics problem.<\/p>\n

The reason I’m writing this is that I learnt of a scheme in Northern Ireland to use caves with a larger compressed energy storage scheme.\u00a0 The scheme has been awarded the funding as part of the EU’s TEN-E project (despite Brexit).\u00a0 A little bit more background.\u00a0 Northern Ireland has its own grid.\u00a0 As far as I know its not connected to the Republics’ grid but is to the UK grid.\u00a0 Electricity has always been more expensive in Northern Ireland, so much so that when the solar PV grant scheme was operating it was much more generous to take this into account.<\/p>\n

Putting compressed energy storage into caves has drawbacks.\u00a0 The oxygen must not react with the rock or interact with micro-organisms and of course must not leak.\u00a0 For these reasons old salt workings are ideal and this is the type of cave at\u00a0Islandmagee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I hope this scheme goes ahead since one heck of alot of EU money has gone into it so far with even more to follow.\u00a0 Whether this type of energy storage solution will become commonplace if caves are used I think is open to question.\u00a0 Like nuclear each scheme would end up being individual and bespoke which makes it more expensive.\u00a0 The uglier warehouse type could be very cheap to build though.\u00a0 The technology is believed to be competitive with other energy generation systems.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Energy storage gets talked about a lot at the moment.\u00a0 When this subject is mentioned its almost always Li ion batteries.\u00a0 There are other options for energy storage but these are tending to get forgotten about.\u00a0 There is pumped storage … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,17,4,1],"tags":[84,61,63,177],"class_list":["post-7538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-storage","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-renewables","category-uncategorized","tag-energy-storage","tag-renewable-energy","tag-renewables-2","tag-solar"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - energy storage - 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