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23 Comments
- 1053r, on 11/18/2008, -1/+81500 recharge cycles, and as high an energy density as lithium ion. No mention of cost, but the wikipedia article says it is low. Only downside seems to be that they need to be 300 - 350 C to operate.
- Michaelabehsera, on 11/18/2008, -2/+8Pretty cool
- AFelsinger, on 11/18/2008, -1/+6I like the idea of using water/hydrological systems to store the power, but i think these batteries would probably have less of an impact on the habitats
- Modestexcuse, on 11/19/2008, -1/+4I'll buy one, charge it to my visa.
- Barackalypse, on 11/19/2008, -0/+3A similar sodium-sulfur battery in use in West Virginia cost $2.5 million dollars for 1.2 megawatts (the one in this article is 1 megawatt). Which means calling it cost effective is pretty dubious, since it only storres enough power for 500 homes for an evening, which means you've got $5,000 per house into the project before you've even put up any wind turbines. $5,000 will pay my electric bill for about 4 years. Nice try, come back when you cut costs by another 50% on the generation and storage technologies, then you might compete with nuclear or coal on cost and availability.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/20 ... - tbhurst, on 11/18/2008, -1/+3For a company that resisted renewable energy so strongly just a few years ago, Xcel is taking some serious leadership in the private sector R&D of renewables and efficiency technology.
- BrewmasterC, on 11/19/2008, -0/+2Micro-foundries. Use the energy from off the grid wind turbines to smelt locally mined metal ore and sell the product. They run 24 hours no fuss, you just need to keep them with feed stock.
- manzplan, on 11/19/2008, -2/+4I take two.. charge mine to Modestexcuses Visa..
- Sagags, on 11/19/2008, -1/+2your insightful comment made me rethink my life
- zekolas, on 11/19/2008, -0/+1From an economic perspective this still is not cheaper then coal or nuclear, so I will not get my hopes up as green energy will never take off as long as its more expensive then conventional forms of energy. I am not defending coal I am just stating a fact.
From a Green perspective producing and disposing of the batteries may have their own environmental consequences, however I am not chemist so I am not sure what by products sodium and sulfur can produce?
What we need is a efficient way to store hydrogen , what probably means combining it with other compounds such as Nitrogen as or Carbon as storing hydrogen by itself is too hard. We could then use the excess electricity from these turbines to power this process.
If some one figures that out, wind power + fuel cells could break our dependency on oil. - brandita, on 11/19/2008, -0/+1This changes everything.
- inactive, on 11/19/2008, -0/+1cool sodium and sulfur ought to make some nice fumes when one of those battery-trailers is caught in a flood.
- inactive, on 11/19/2008, -0/+1 I'm looking at a 800watt turbine, but I have no clue what type of battery/ies to get.
Would it be better to get 4 larger 70-100Ah car batteries and be really careful not to discharge them more than 20-30%, OR go with a gel battery like an optima.... Any advice? - theman2c, on 11/19/2008, -0/+1what about the pollution created by disposing of these 80-ton batteries when they are no longer in service?
- theman2c, on 11/19/2008, -0/+1the company says it cost more than $4 million. That is NOT low-cost. (unless you get 25% of the cost covered by the governement--you and me--which this project did).
- theman2c, on 11/19/2008, -0/+1Dig a bit deeper and you might be surprised at these "cost-efficient" 80 ton behemoths.
"The units cost the partners $4.5 million. That's one drawback to the emerging technology - the battery costs $2,500 per kilowatt, or 10 percent of a new coal-fired plant. The project received a $1 million grant from the Minnesota Renewable Development fund."
additionally, they are only rated to last 15 years, not a long-term solution in power supply terms.
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20081118/BUSINE ...
(from a local newspaper covering the installation) - Barackalypse, on 11/19/2008, -4/+4This isn't an answer to people who claim wind power is unreliable, its a affirmation that it is. You don't go installing 80 ton power storage systems unless you have problems with the generation being variable. Also, I don't know how you can describe something as "cost-effective" without mentioning the cost, and my professional experience suggests anything that weighs 80 tons is expensive, doubly so if its only enough to power 500 homes for an evening.
- premiumtours, on 11/19/2008, -0/+0Great... We are now becoming like the Fifth Element...
- nichesiteexpert, on 11/19/2008, -1/+1You got a brain like a bird. If I have to choose between renewable energy and more birds, well, I can recycle the dead birds on my grill.
- inactive, on 11/19/2008, -2/+1So like, it stores air?
/s - rmad1949, on 11/19/2008, -2/+0Too bad we cannot get the truth from anyone about solar and wind energy. Most certainly the oil barons want nothing to do with any form of energy outside of their oil and are not going to spend much more than a dime of their grandchildren's inheritance on some ***** that will replace their oil. Hopefully somebody will come along and fix it for us. They say a human like Einstein comes around about every 500 years. So, I guess around 2455 things will start improving. I'm tired of listening to all the *****. What is the truth? Anybody? For example, just how big of a storage battery do we need to run 14,000,000 people in Los Angeles and Orange counties in California? Sounds to me like it would be about 50 miles high and cover the state of Colorado.
- inactive, on 11/19/2008, -4/+1***** you. Two of my friends..... Oh ***** it.
- Lavarock, on 11/19/2008, -5/+2THE RAZOR SHARP BLADES KILL OUR BIRDS WONT SOMEBODY PUT THIS TO THE BIRDS? BIRDS PEOPLE. THIS IS FOR THE BIRDS.
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