Free Republic

Brenmiller Energy’s boxes of hot rocks are being deployed to turn electricity into steam heat, boost campus heat-and-power systems, and make power plants more efficient. Doron Brenmiller, co-founder of Brenmiller Energy, knows all about the useful things hot rocks can do. Over the past 12 years, the Israel-based manufacturer of thermal energy storage systems has evolved from producing heat batteries for a specific purpose — solar-thermal power plants — to heat batteries for a much wider range of applications. Brenmiller Energy’s bGen systems, which use crushed rock as an energy-storage medium, are now being deployed to turn cheap electricity into...

It's rarely great news when an area gets blanketed in volcanic ash – but University of Barcelona researchers have discovered it has a rare combination of useful properties, which make it remarkably useful as an energy storage medium. We've written a number of times about super-cheap thermal energy storage, and a number of other times about highly efficient heat batteries operating at super-high temperatures. The cheapest of these 'brick toasters' use the most abundant of materials, and the most efficient can handle extraordinarily high temperatures using materials like liquid tin and carbon materials – but volcanic ash, as it turns...

2011 saw huge advances in solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, and these advancements will continue into 2012. In fact 2012 could be the year that renewable energy sources start to seriously compete with traditional fossil fuels, at least that is the hope in the battle to reduce carbon emissions and our dependence on dwindling oil stocks. However a major problem with renewable energy sources is that they can rarely provide consistent power levels, due to a myriad of factors outside of human control. Eric Wesoff, an industry analyst with Greentech Media, explains that, “A wind farm only works...

French scientists have demonstrated the potential of a new fuel cell catalyst inspired by hydrogenase enzymes. Although its activity doesn't yet match that of platinum, the researchers say it is the first useful biomimetic catalyst capable of operating under fuel cell conditions.In a hydrogen economy, power would be generated by oxidising stored hydrogen in fuel cells. This reversible reaction - the opposite of which produces hydrogen through the electrolysis of water - can be driven by platinum-based catalysts. Nature, however, in hydrogenase enzymes, has evolved a way of doing this without the need for such rare metals and thus borrowing...

EIN Presswire / The YESS Storage Battery is Your Energy Storage Solution! ERRA Incorporated, San Antonio, TX, USA has acquired all rights and patents to a breakthrough battery technology to be marketed as the YESS Battery from ERRA, Inc. "Our acquisition of this battery technology for all fields of use enables us to deploy the battery in hundreds of existing applications that will prove to be truly game changing. In addition to those existing markets, this battery will create new markets that did not previously exist. It will have significant impact for the entire clean / renewable energy industry." Jim...

Saving wind power for later A start-up says it's devised a system to produce electricity from wind turbines even when there is no wind, taking on the major challenge of storing wind-generated power. General Compression, based in Attleboro, Mass., last week said it received a $5 million round of seed funding to commercialize a wind-power storage system that uses compressed air. Wind turbines typically have an onboard power generator that sends electricity down the tower and onto the grid. General Compression plans to break with that basic design and place an air compressor in the nacelle, the housing on a...

GOTTA FREEP THIS - Operation Accountability Please help FReep the Commissioner for Patents and the US Patent and Trademark Office who have not used logic or accountability and have not followed the authority of the US Constitution. There are at least two very important reasons why this important. REASON 1. At the present time, with the United States at war against terror, energy measurement, energy generation, and energy storage -- including alternative methods -- are crucially important to the United States for both its economy and for its security. Meanwhile, the US Patent Office under the Commissioner for Patents Godici...