Storing energy is hard work by Doug Mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Aug 26 2010)

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   The Next Big Thing in energy technology is more efficient storage.  And you can quote me on that.  But it isn't easy and new solutions are about a decade out.

   As I noted in an earlier column, you need a way to buffer/capture wind and solar energy.  Current solutions basically are very Victorian, with lots of moving parts, ranging from high-tech flywheels to pumping water up a hill or compressing air in a big cavern.   And there's always the brute scale solution: using a big battery

   Last week, 24M Technologies, a spin-off of lithium battery maker A123 Systems, got attention for picking up $10 million in venture money plus some grant money from the Department of Energy.   A123 is spinning out 24M because it's a "significant" long-term project -- close to a decade before commercialization -- and a big fork from the company's core focus on lithium ion technology. The 24M venture will focus on building high-density energy for utilities, using a combination of rechargeable batteries, fuel cells and flow batteries.   Secret sauce in the 24M battery technology involves a "semi-solid" design that could cut production costs by 85 percent. 

   Nanotechnology is being pumped as a way to build an ultracapacitor, a device to quickly store and discharge energy at rates faster than chemical batteries.  Initial applications for ultracapacitors are expected in transportation -- more efficient storage/use of braking energy, for one -- but power grid apps are also expected.

   In August, start-up EnerG2 has broken ground a plant for commercial-scale production of "synthetic high-performance carbon electrode materials."  The nano-carbon factory will take 18 months to build; then someone else will have to take the materials and incorporate them into working devices for storing power which then in term have to be bought and incorporated into the electrical grid.

   Austin Texas-based Graphene Energy is also working the nano-carbon angle for storage, but they're still doing lab work and are currently looking for a sugar daddy, er a combination of government grants and VC funding to build a production.

   Needless to say, there's no fast solution and no guarantees that new-wave flow technology or nano-based ultracapacitors will manage to dislodge incumbent battery technology in a couple of decades.  You only have to look at some of the overpromises of the methanol fuel cell crowd over the past decade to realize that energy storage is hard.

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