Why energy storage sucks
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Why energy storage sucks
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Re: Why energy storage sucks
#2Surprised there's no mention of Vanadium Redox as an alternative that solves several of these problems even better than Lithium Ion.
They can be fully cycled over 100,000 times (compare to Li-ion's 400-1200, lead's 500-800) and are expected to last 20 to 30 years. They can stay in a single state for long periods of time without degradation and can be rapidly and efficiently charged or discharged. There's also no fire risk.
The biggest downside is size and weight. A refrigerator sized VRB in the attic of a house would work, but that is a dealbreaker for some/most people. These certainly won't go in cars, but as stationary appliances for those with the space, they would work extremely well for solar storage.
DOE factsheet: http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/VRB.pdf
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery
Re: Why energy storage sucks
#3I really want to read this article, but there are too many spelling and grammar mistakes or lack of punctuation. Please consider spellchecking it?
Re: Why energy storage sucks
#4So what happened to the idea of using some modern version of flywheels to store power?
Re: Why energy storage sucks
#5Surprised there's no mention of Vanadium Redox as an alternative that solves several of these problems even better than Lithium Ion. They can be fully cycled over 100,000 times (compare to Li-ion's 400-1200, lead's 500-800) and are expected to last 20 to 30 years. They can stay in a single state for long periods of time without degradation and can be rapidly and efficiently charged or discharged. There's also no fire…
Copper hexacyanoferrate batteries are supposed to last at least 40,000 times (compared to what the study on this I read awhile back quoted as Li-ion as 400), yet have the energy density of li-ion.
They just haven't produced a commercializable version of the technology yet.
Re: Why energy storage sucks
#6Surprised there's no mention of Vanadium Redox as an alternative that solves several of these problems even better than Lithium Ion. They can be fully cycled over 100,000 times (compare to Li-ion's 400-1200, lead's 500-800) and are expected to last 20 to 30 years. They can stay in a single state for long periods of time without degradation and can be rapidly and efficiently charged or discharged. There's also no fire…
> A refrigerator sized VRB in the attic of a house would work, but that is a dealbreaker for some/most people.
Even a refrigerator-sized VRB doesn't store that much energy, that's ~650 liters so about 40MJ, under 1.5L worth of fuel. And more importantly it weights half a tonne and (assuming it has the same shape as a standard fridge) has an area density of ~1.5t/m^2.
Re: Why energy storage sucks
#7So what happened to the idea of using some modern version of flywheels to store power?
They were deployed in Formula 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_recovery_system
I'm not aware of any building or utility-scale systems.
Re: Why energy storage sucks
#8Surprised there's no mention of Vanadium Redox as an alternative that solves several of these problems even better than Lithium Ion. They can be fully cycled over 100,000 times (compare to Li-ion's 400-1200, lead's 500-800) and are expected to last 20 to 30 years. They can stay in a single state for long periods of time without degradation and can be rapidly and efficiently charged or discharged. There's also no fire…
Personal VRBs make about as much sense as having your own gas turbine, but utility-scale ones for peak demand response make a lot of sense.
Re: Why energy storage sucks
#9So what happened to the idea of using some modern version of flywheels to store power?
They were deployed in Formula 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_recovery_system I'm not aware of any building or utility-scale systems.
There are a few utility-scale flywheel systems deployed: http://beaconpower.com/stephentown-new-york/
Re: Why energy storage sucks
#10So what happened to the idea of using some modern version of flywheels to store power?
Flywheels target a bit of a different problem than many other energy storage solutions. They are only able to store energy for very short periods. This is valuable to counter short term changes in the power generation, but it won't help you to store solar power for longer dark periods.
Wikipedia has some info about existing installations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_storage_power_system tl;dr Only a few of them exist, they haven't been installed in large quantities yet.