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Storing Sunshine – Technologies Are Emerging

By Matthew L. Wald No matter how much scientists and engineers lower the cost of electricity produced from sunlight – or from the wind, the other widely available renewable source – the energy’s value is less than electricity made from coal or natural gas, because it is less reliable and, in utility lingo, not “dispatchable,” meaning a customer cannot order it turned on or off at will. And neither resource is a good match to handle the load of a typical grid. Wind tends to be strongest at night and in the winter, while peak load is usually on summer afternoons. Solar production is strongest in the afternoon but ends long before the peak does, since high temperatures persist when the sun is very low in the sky or below the horizon. Storage technologies are emerging, though none are in common use and all have disadvantages. One method is batteries. They may use technology similar to car batteries, using chemicals that react either to absorb electrons or give them off. But these batteries are set up differently, with vastly larger quantities of those chemicals. VRB Power Systems, of Vancouver, B.C., sells “flow batteries,” with tanks to hold hundreds of gallons […]

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Electric Cars Nearly Ready, But Batteries Are Less So

By Kevin Cameron CLEVER and attractive, the Chevrolet Volt, a design study for a new wrinkle in electric cars, dominated the headlines coming from the Detroit auto show in January. But the introduction was punctuated with an asterisk. The car that promised a fuel economy equivalent of 150 miles a gallon and a total range of 640 miles using its onboard recharging system carried a major caveat: the lithium-ion batteries required to make it a reality are not yet available, and won’t be until 2010 at the earliest, industry experts say. The Volt is not the only car waiting for lithium-ion batteries to be roadworthy. Reports last month in Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, a Japanese business newspaper, said that the next generation of the Toyota Prius would be delayed by six months because the carmaker had decided that lithium-ion batteries were not quite ready. Officially, the car was not postponed because Toyota had never announced an introduction date, but such a decision would have major implications: reverting to nickel-metal hydride batteries in today’s Prius means finding room for a larger and heavier power pack. A Toyota spokesman, John Hanson, said that while the company saw “huge potential” in lithium-ion batteries, it […]

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