Over the last month or so there’s been a rise in the number of energy storage technologies getting press off the back of the large announcement by Ausra about solar thermal storage. Solutions in this area have included: potential - pumping water uphill for hydropower gen; kinetic - using flywheels in shipping containers, electrostatic - in capacitors and electrochemical - using batteries.
The latest story to come out is this one about a Sodium Sulfur batter that is able to operate at the megawatt scale.
Charging Charleston: The utility American Electric Power (AEP) deployed this huge sodium-sulfur battery as part of a demonstration project in Charleston, WV. The battery provides 1.2 megawatts of power for up to seven hours, easing the strain on an overloaded substation. Trouble-free operation since installation last year convinced AEP that such energy-storage technology is ready for active duty.
Credit: AEP |
The AEP system uses a sodium-sulfur battery about the size of a double-decker bus (see below), plus power electronics to manage the flow of AC power in and out of the DC battery. Though new to the United States, the system has been used at the megawatt scale in Japan since the early 1990s; the battery was produced by NGK Insulators of Nagoya, Japan. |
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