Posted: July 21, 2008 Post Expires: January 21, 2009
Sandecker Renewable Energies, LLC
Sandecker Renewable Energies is co-developing a wind turbine energy storage technology with the University Of Wyoming and their associated research partners. We have a preliminary design idea that we will use as a basis for this outline and development plan.
We are looking to use as many off the shelf products as can be incorporated into the design. Thereby reducing the development time and costs. Our goals are to bring this technology to market as soon as possible so as to beat the competition in this field. There are several other companies involved in compressor storage technology but most of them are using technology that puts the compressor in the turbine which requires them to develop the entire system.
We feel that using existing turbine technology and components is far superior because of the ability to have a better supply chain through the use of existing products. We want to limit the development requirements to the controller of the compressed air feeding the expander that will control output energy.
Also we need to develop a power electronics that will control the electrical demand and decide where to pull the power from, turbines or storage or both. Additionally we need to come up with a schema to control the build up of water in the compressed air, as this will develop into ice in cold climates.
The storage options are also something that needs development, either large LPG tanks or large diameter gas pipelines buried in the ground that will have the effect of controlling the temperature of the compressed air (keeping it warmer in winter). Solar thermal could also be used to augment the addition of heat into the stored compressed air.
Our current design is to utilize standard wind turbine technology coupled to an asynchronous motor/generator connected to a rotary vane or screw compressor. This will then pump into storage tanks. Then when power is wanted from the compressed air the compressor becomes an "expander" and the motor becomes the generator. If the turbine is producing power at the same time as power is being extracted from the storage it will add to the output.
It is envisioned that the maximum working pressure will be in the range of 1500psi. This will allow a large amount of energy to be stored in a relatively small storage devise. A part of the technology will be to utilize the heat generated by the generator to preheat the compressed air directly before expansion in the expanders to capture more of the potential energy. This could be done with heat exchangers coupled to a cooling system around the motor/generator. This will accomplish several things at once, first it will capture energy that would otherwise be lost in the form of heat, and second it will cool the generator thus improving its efficiency.
It is envisioned that this will be used in a grid tied application or one with a continuous running fuel powered generator such as is used in the far north in Canada and Alaska in remote villages. We are looking at this technology for relatively small-scale applications, under 1MW, this will be to evaluate the technology and then determine its merits for larger usages. We are planning to use a 5KW turbine for our prototype because it is small enough to make it affordable and large enough to be practical for use in residential applications. We see its use in net metering applications most effectively in areas that offer time of use rate billing. This is because the system could be programmed to deliver power from the compressed air during the highest/peak rate time thereby producing the highest return on the investment and most money per KWh produced. If the system were sized correctly it would allow the maximum allowed KWh for the net metering over the entire peak rate period. Then begin charging again for the next day.
Our main objective in this development is to bring to market a product that can be used in residential and Ag/ranch applications and determine the feasibility of this technology for usage in a wind farm application, or other large usage applications in distributed generation.
We need equity investment partners:
It is a socially and environmentally responsible business and technology to invest in. Not only is it the "Right" thing to invest in but, it is a good investment from a ROI point of view. We need a group of investors to raise $500,000 who will get shares in SRE and another investor group who wants to invest in an equity position in the individual projects that will utilize this new technology.
Each project will be a separate LLC business. These projects will range from the development of this technology into a refined version of our prototype used for residential/business applications costing near $100,000 and a field mobile system for use by the military, costing under a several million dollars to wind farms costing hundreds of millions of dollars. We are also interested in the investor who wants to install one at their home or business site.
Contact Information:
Chris Land
CTO, Wind Technologies
Sandecker Renewable Energies, LLC
PO Box 713
24 Granite Ln.
Pinedale, Wy. 82941
USA
307-367-2699
