Alternative Energy Technology
Sunday, October 10, 2010
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Alternative energies like solar and wind power are gaining prominence in the world. Its technologies are progressing day by day. But surely, until they solve the problem of storage, the ascent to the summit of "Mount Sustainability" as some call it, will remain slippery.
Take the example of electric cars. Projected as the visionary Shai Agassi of Better Place, if we could load electricity generated with renewable energy (like solar or wind) without having to throw away their batteries pollutants and without depleting the world's lithium reserves, would in our hands a locomotion system that could be called sustainable.
is clear that renewable energies are the beginning of the solution to sustainability, but we have to get stored for use when we need them and not just when the wind blows or the sun rises. A liter of gasoline contains more than 3.43 x 10? 7 Joules / liter of energy. An almost magical. Nature took millions of years in the making. Our civilization is built upon it. Without doubt, we are still far from able to create such energy density, let alone in a clean and renewable.
There are mainly four ways to store energy on a large scale: Chemistry
Electrical Mechanical Thermal
In Seville, Spain, Solúcar PS10 is a plant that uses solar thermal storage technology
Photo: Courtesy afloresm / Flickr
chemical storage is the most common: they are the batteries of all our electronic devices, the ignition system of our vehicles and even household solar installations. It is a polluting technology and impractical, especially a large scale. Electric Storage
capacitors is based on and is not harmful for the environment. It was discovered in 1745 by Ewald Georg von Kleist. Capacitors store electricity just between two plates and can be recharged indefinitely. The disadvantage is that a small amount saved or improved energy density and called for a short time. Perhaps the development of new ultra-capacitor is part of the solution. Mechanical Storage
Based on the famous laws of Isaac Newton, is being used ever more ingenious ways and at first do not harm the environment. The three most widely used forms are:
hydro pump storage: It consists of a set of pumps that return water to a reservoir upstream of the turbines. If you consider the complete energy equation, it is clear that not only wins but loses energy.
A hydroelectric plant generates electricity on a near constant during the 24 hours but the demand is irregular day generally being higher than the night. To not waste the night over ideally should store this energy for the next day. While
make up a given volume of water to recirculate through the turbine requires more energy than it generates then the whole equation is positive because otherwise they would have missed completely the nightly build.
compressed air storage: This is a system somewhat similar to the previous. During times of low demand, air is pumped into underground caves creating high pressure. Then he takes this pressure during peak hours to turn a turbine generators.
Photo: sustentator.org
air is pumped (2) to the cave (1) achieving high pressure. The air is stored underground until the time of peak demand. When needed the extra power, compressed air spins the turbine (3) and generates electricity from a generator (4).
are usually mixed and compressed air to burn natural gas to avoid the effect of cooling the air gets to expand, increased efficiency. Personally, this burning gas does not support it because it is a non-renewable energy.
Flyers (in the physical sense of the word): A wheel is a disc with high rotational inertia, a concept similar to the weight of an object, but applied to the rotation.
Flyers are loaded and unloaded through a motor-generator. The motor / generator takes power from the power supply to turn the flywheel rotor. During an outage or low voltage motor / generator provides power. The kinetic energy stored in the rotor is converted to current by the generator and then to AC by an inverter and a control system.
Flyers More advanced are made of carbon fiber and magnetic bearings. They can rotate at speeds of up to 60,000 revolutions per minute. Additionally offers the possibility to download very fast compared with batteries based on chemical reactions. Its main drawback is a short time of storage. Thermal storage
is a fairly novel concept and is being used a lot in English designs of solar thermal plants. Its operation is placed under the large water tank to heat a container of salt (sodium chloride). An array of mirrors focuses sunlight on the water tank and the container of salt and are able to transform water into steam and turn a turbine.
When the sun goes down, the salt in a liquid state between 801 and 1465 degrees Celsius (previously heated by solar radiation) becomes the protagonist and is heating the water then carefully avoiding the turbines. Once properly sized system, it has a solar plant running 24 hours a day.
These technologies achieve greater efficiency by allowing to take advantage of unused energy on off-peak but still not solve the challenge of storing energy in a transportable and clean.
While we are on track, still have to wait a while to make Sustainable our cars, motorcycles, laptops and cell phones.
Rodrigo Herrera Vegas is co-founder of sustentator.org
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