New Company May Commercialize Wind Power Storage
A new company called General Compression says it will commercialize its idea for storing wind energy. Using compressed-air energy storage and a $5 million round of seed funding, the Massachusetts company plans to use compressed-air technology to store energy from wind turbines.
A typical wind turbine has a generator that sits on the turbine (the nacelle), and the electricity from the generator goes down the turbine and onto the grid. General Compression places an air compressor on the nacelle that sends highly compressed air down the tower and into underground storage (like a cave or empty gas well) or through pipelines. The pressurized air can be expanded and released when needed to make electricity. According to the General Compression website, this power would be “the lowest cost per megawatt of any wind farm in the world." See a video of the technology here.
If this idea works, it would revolutionize the wind power industry. Using compressed air to store energy is not a new idea, but companies have been wary of pursing commercialized concepts in the past because of the cost and technology barriers. But with the cost of wind power falling and worries of fossil fuel prices increasing, there’s a renewed interest.
Josh Magee, senior wind analyst at Emerging Energy Research, told CNET news.com:
"If you could figure out a way to do it cost effectively and show [utilities] you can be very profitable at it…then you would have the ability to rapidly scale wind power. If all of the sudden you had capacity, you can make a bigger dent in climate change, energy security and make a significant contribution to peak demand."
Currently a prototype device of the air compressor exists and a large-scale version is being tested later this year. General Compression plans to test on a turbine in the field in 2008.
General Compression has to overcome quite a few hurdles to make this concept a reality, including finding appropriate sites for their wind turbines, which not only have to be located in windy areas, but also near geological formations suitable to storing compress air. However the company says that where the geology isn’t conducive to storage, underground pipelines could store 6-12 hours of a wind farm’s power.
CNETNews.com, via EcoToolbox.com
General Compression
March 30th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
As usual, wind advocates always seem to either not tell the truth (they proclaim a windfarm of 100 1.5 MW turbines as a “150 megawatt facility”,
knowinf it can’t ever generate more than 40 megawatts consistently), or they leave out ratehr significant facts. I thought this technology was great when I first learned of it, until I heard the descriptionm that it needs natural gas to heat up the expanding air to produce enough power to run the turbines. Turns out that the amount of natural gas they use is HALF(!!!) of what a regular, inexpensive natural gas power plant would use to produce the same output. This makes wind power far and away the dirtiest of the alternative power sources, as well as being far and away the poorest method of meeting peak demand (in Texas during 2006, their wind turbines ran at a paltry 2.5% of capacity during peak demand periods). That, my friends, means that those phoney baloney
cost estimates provided by the wind undustry and its sponsored and paid cheerleaders
(like http://www.renewableenergyaccess,.com) are gross underestimates, because they aren’t including the high cost of inclusion of widely dispersed wind turbines into the grid, and now they are also shown to not include the cost of building new plants when demand increases , IRREGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH WIND HAS BEEN ADDED. Wind truly sucks, and the new technology simply makes it more expensive and no longer a green energy source. It’s high time the alternative energy folks started getting honest and not acting like paid cheerleaders. We can’t get there by telling lies, lies and more lies. That doesn’t work.
March 30th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I'm pretty sure irregardless is not a word.
Also, I would venture to say that the cost of adding widely dispersed wind turbines to the grid would be much less than adding many wind turbines to the grid in one place. After all, the wind's always blowing somewhere.
And finally, I think it's misleading to point to wind power's failure as a peak generator as a failure of wind power as a technology. I don't know anyone who currently sees wind power as having much to do with peak demand periods. Instead, it provides base power where wind is predictable, and on average runs at much closer to 40% than 2.5% of capacity.
Storing energy using compressed air for release, however, would allow wind energy to 'produce' during peak hours. How is this bad?
-David
GO Founder
March 31st, 2007 at 10:12 pm
So because you can generate expensive peak power at will using 1/2 the amount of fossile fuel it’s stupid and bad? get behind me satan!
April 18th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
[...] options of dealing with the storage issue have emerged including compressed air, hydro pump-backs, and more efficient flywheel designs. These are all good steps, and more will [...]
August 16th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
[...] options of dealing with the storage issue have emerged including compressed air, hydro pump-backs, and more efficient flywheel designs. These are all good steps, and more will [...]