Saving wind power for later (compressed air storage)

CNet News ^ | 3/27/2007 | Martin LaMonica

[Uncledave]

This diagram illustrates how the Iowa Stored Energy Park plans to use compressed air to store power generated by wind turbines. Electricity from the wind turbines will power motors that compress air to many times atmospheric pressure. The air is injected under ground into an aquifer, a dome-shaped structure made of porous sandstone. When demand--and price--for electricity is highest during the middle of the day, the compressed air is released and used to power a generator, and electricity is sold to the grid.

General Compression, a start-up that recently gained seed funding, intends to use compressed-air energy storage but is taking a somewhat different approach. It intends to integrate the compressor directly onto a wind turbine. Storage can be in geologic formations like aquifers, or pipelines.

Credit: Iowa Stored Energy Park

[Uncledave]

Renewable Energy Ping

Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off

[pnh102]

This is excellent news. I hope we make further progress in being able to harvest this power.

[edpc]

This idea blows.

[camle]

uh... using a wind turbine to generate wind?

sounds an awful lot like a perpetual motion machine to me. Kinda like getting more energy than you use to generate it?

[DungeonMaster]

There are never enough numbers for me on this topic. How many mwhr can be stored for how long and how much is the additional equipment and what does that make the cost of the electricity?

[DB]

You would think there would be a lot of losses in all the steps the energy goes through...

For example when you compress air the air gets hot. When that heat dissipates it is all lost energy.

[P-40]

they can now make wind-generated power available when the demand--and price--is highest

Not to mention that they can also promise to deliver and deliver in a consistent fashion to the grid they are selling to.

[BuffaloJack]

Exactly.
Stupidest Liberal Ideas of the Decade.

[DB]

Compressing air has to have large losses.

[JB in Whitefish]

"Saving wind power for later (compressed air storage)"


I believe the Mexicans thought of this YEARS ago....

[camle]

the words "crack" and "pot" come to mind.

[Tarpon]

Couldn't they just use Mrs Bill Clinton?

I have heard of a new fangled device, it's called a battery. I wonder if it would be useful in this application?

[DungeonMaster]

Compressing air has to have large losses.

Yes, that's another concern. Meanwhile windpower only amounts to about 0.8 percent of all the power on the grid. We don't need to store it, just use it.

[The_Reader_David]

Interesting idea. I wonder how the cost and efficiency of energy storage/recovery as compressed air compares with other possible schemes?

e.g batteries--I'm fairly sure compressed air and an air-driven turbine beat event best batteries on both counts. But also composite material flywheels with a reversible generator/motor at the center and very low friction bearing (or better still floating magnetically over a superconduct in an evacuated chamber--no friction!) , on this one I guess, the flywheel scheme wins on efficiency, but not cost.

[edpc]

It may or may not work, but I meant it in the literal sense.

[The_Reader_David]

Um, no. I remember the ideal gas law, but your analysis would imply that the cans of compressed air used to clean electronic equipment have no stored energy. Obviously that's wrong, because when you push the button on the aerosol can, the energy stored as pressure becomes kinetic energy which blows the dust off your keyboard. The scheme uses that same kinetic energy from pressure on a massive scale to drive a turbine.

[KarlInOhio]

How long before Al Gore "finds" that taking energy from the wind promotes global warming.

"When your baby Earth has a fever, you don't slow down nature's fan."

[vietvet67]

Likes this system better. www.vrbpower.com And yes, I own shares.. :-)

[Red Badger]

Massaschusetts?..........Lots of hot air there.........Kennedy, Kerry, Frank, etc........