HAYWARD, Calif., April 01, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Primus Power (“Primus”), the leading long duration stationary energy storage company, announced today that Etechwin is operating an EnergyPod 2 at their Beijing campus.  Etechwin is the microgrid subsidiary of Goldwind, a world-leading wind turbine manufacturer.

The curtailment on wind energy is a significant economic problem, especially in western China. As stated by Bloomberg, “drawing upon data from China’s National Energy Administration, Bloomberg New Energy Finance recently estimated that owners of China’s wind and solar assets forewent approximately $4.7 billion in potential revenue due to curtailment in 2017.”  In June 2017, the Qinghai province recognized the critical role that energy storage can play to reduce curtailment and proposed new legislation that would mandate the use of energy storage systems with new wind turbine installations.

Battery energy storage paired with wind turbines unlocks the ability to mitigate rapid wind output changes due to varying wind speeds and helps ensure a stable power output, and controlled ramp up and ramp down of the wind power generation [link].  Wind plus storage also provides electric grid operators the ability to time shift power generation to periods of high demand and provides frequency control to ensure a stable grid.

“Policy makers in China are considering a mandate that energy storage be incorporated with all new grid connected wind developments,” says Guoju Zhang, Goldwind’s Product Advanced Research Department Chief. ”In anticipation of this mandate, we have installed, commissioned and are operating a Primus EnergyPod 2 system at our facility. With the help of the Primus team, we look forward to proving out the value of battery energy storage paired with our wind turbines.”

“Primus is excited to be working with Goldwind and Etechwin to help solve the challenges represented by renewable curtailment,” remarked Jorg Heinemann, Primus Power’s Chief Commercial Officer.  “Both Goldwind and their customers will greatly benefit from the multi-hour performance and multi-decade life that our EnergyPod 2 provides. Our friends at Goldwind and Etechwin are strong partners, and we look forward to continuing our partnership on future projects”.

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From powering our homes and workplaces to fueling our cars and charging our cell phones, it is an undeniable fact that energy is critical to our everyday lives. With the world’s population projected to grow to 8.6 billion by 2030, we can expect energy demand to witness a significant surge in the long term.

This global megatrend bodes well for the utilities sector, as it forecasts needs well into the future, but also poses a challenge: How do we provide energy that is accessible, reliable, efficient and sustainable?

Aware of the issue, Middle East countries are beginning to diversify their energy sources – a curious development considering that the region is home to some of the world’s leading oil and gas producers. Despite this, governments across the region are setting renewable energy targets, irrespective of their position on the global resource spectrum.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia has a target of 9.5 gigawatts under Saudi Vision 2030, and the UAE aims to produce nearly half of its electricity via renewables by 2050. Meanwhile, Jordan – an energy importer – plans to boost its renewable energy capacity to 1.8 gigawatts by 2020.

While these targets are promising for renewable energy companies, as they demonstrate a commitment to the development and financing of the industry, the utilities sector must also address the intermittency of renewable energy supply with viable storage solutions – such as batteries – in order to ensure the sustainability of its uptake.

While conventional power plants operating on diesel or gas boast a continuous supply of electricity – primarily because these resources can be stored for future use – renewable energy sources exist within a ‘use it or lose it’ window. This perceived barrier for their adoption can be overcome through leveraging battery storage solutions to store the energy until it is needed.

In the small German town of Gaildorf, big things are happening. The first water battery project has had its pilot in this picturesque old town near Stuttgart, using only natural sources of energy for both production and storage purposes.

This pilot is a part of a unique project from the German company Max Bögl Wind AG, which combines water storage technology with renewable electric energy production from wind turbines.

Another sensation is that one of the four turbines is, at 178 meters, the highest wind turbine in the world. The primary advantage of such height is the access to stronger winds in higher altitudes and consequently more available energy.

How It Works

Firstly, four wind turbines harvest the power of the wind and convert it to mechanical energy. This can then be used to generate electricity.

When the wind is particularly strong, the amount of produced power is higher than the demand of public electricity grid. Wind power plants usually can’t store this energy surplus, so in that case, the wind turbines are shut down, and this energy is not utilized.

However, this new project allows the electricity to be stored. The foundations of wind turbine generators serve as an upper reservoir for the Water Battery, with a storage capacity of 70-megawatt hours.

The Water Battery is a type of pumped hydroelectric storage, in which the energy is saved in the upper reservoir in the form of water. When demand for the electric power is high, the top reservoir opens, and water flows downhill through turbines which translate this energy into electricity. Conventional pumped hydroelectric storage facilities use the energy of electric grid to pump the released water uphill again in the periods of low electricity demands, but in this new project, there is no need for this additional usage of electric energy, even when the energy demands are low.

A German firm is aiming to help homes obtain year-round self-produced renewable energy with a hybrid storage system combining batteries with hydrogen.

Zeyad Abul-Ella, managing director and founder of Berlin-based Home Power Solutions (HPS), said his company’s Picea all-in-one unit, which went on sale this month, “has a hundred times more storage capacity with twice the output” of competing systems.

The system deliverssolar-powered heating and ventilation as well as electricity, the company said. It comes with a guarantee that customers can service 100 percent of their own energy requirements from their own solar panels, which are not included.

Under the hood, the Picea system contains lead-gel batteries and a fuel cell, electrolyzer, solar charge controller, inverter, hydrogen tank, heat exchanger and storage, ventilation unit and energy management system.

It has a peak electrical output of 20 kilowatts, a continuous power rating of 8 kilowatts, and can store energy for thermal, daily and seasonal use, according to a product data sheet. The daily storage capacity amounts to 25 kilowatt-hours.

The Picea’s thermal storage tank, meanwhile, can deliver up to 45 kilowatt-hours, with 350 kilowatt-hours to 1 megawatt-hour of seasonal storage capacity, presumably delivered through hydrogen.

The technology mix is designed to allow the Picea to keep a household running off solar and battery storage in summer, while storing up enough hydrogen to cover energy use over the winter.

Overall, the system, which will start shipping in the fourth quarter of 2018, is expected to deliver between 3 and 6 megawatt-hours of energy a year.

March 30 (Renewables Now) – Hitachi Europe Ltd, Mitsubishi Motors (TYO:7211) and Engie (EPA:ENGI) have launched a project in the Netherlands to study the potential for electric vehicles (EVs) to act as energy storage for office buildings.

As part of the project, a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) charger has been linked to Engie’s office building in Zaandam. The charger, provided by Hitachi, allows for bi-directional charging between the electric car battery and the building or power grid. It is connected to the building’s energy supply and, when the building produces more solar power than it needs, the surplus is stored in the car battery. The stored energy can be discharged back into the grid when needed.

“This charger exceeds smart charging as we know it and is basically the first real ‘smart grid charger,” said Hans Boot, chief operating officer at Engie Services Netherlands.

Mitsubishi Motors is contributing its Outlander PHEV SUV to the project to serve as an energy storage centre.

For the next stage of the project, the partners will look into how EVs, renewable energy and building energy management systems can work in concert to make buildings energy neutral.

According to the announcement, vehicle-to-building (V2B) technology can play a key role in reducing carbon emissions globally.

The companies linked what they claim is the first ‘vehicle to everything’ EV charger to energy firm ENGIE’s office in Zaandam, with the aim of providing grid flexibility services and boosting the overall energy efficiency of the building.

The project used Hitachi’s V2X Charger, which the global electronics and engineering company claims is the first EV recharging technology able to both power up an electric car as well as discharge the energy back into a building or grid via a variety of different routes.

It is also possible to connect solar panels and external energy storage directly to the V2X Charger “allowing a much more efficient electricity supply to buildings”, Hitachi explained.

The V2X Charger is connected to the building’s energy supply and, when the building generates more solar power than it needs, this excess energy is stored in the battery of the electric car, the consortium explained.

The resulting energy can then be discharged back into the grid when appropriate, and the car battery therefore acts as an energy storage source, as well as an emergency power supply.

Vincent Cobee, corporate vice president at Mitsubishi Motors, said the aim of the project was to show how EVs and plug in hybrid vehicles could be a “vital” component of urban energy systems. “This demonstration will help providing a new energy solution for energy efficient, low carbon smart buildings,” he said.

Buildings and transport together currently account for around 75 per cent of the total carbon emissions of services-focused companies, according to the three firms.

Common rust forms the inner skeleton of these lovely and intricate nanostructures, while their outer layer is a kind of plastic.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a straightforward way to make this type of conducting polymer with high surface area that is likely to be useful for energy transfer and storage applications.

The new research is the cover story of the March 23 issue of ACS Applied Nano Materials.

“Rust will always pose a challenge in Earth’s humid and oxygenated atmosphere,” said Julio M. D’Arcy, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences and a member of the university’s Institute of Materials Science and Engineering. “Corrosion makes structures fragile and decreases the ability of components to function properly. But in our lab, we’ve learned how to control the growth of rust so that it can serve an important purpose.”

Conducting polymers rely on a combination of organic and inorganic materials—usually a core of metal and a shell of plastic—made in a single batch.

D’Arcy and his team reported on a new technique that combines vapor-phase synthesis with solution-based hydrolysis to build three-dimensional nanoflowers, two-dimensional nanoplates and one-dimensional nanofibers.

This work advances the understanding of the chemical mechanisms involved with depositing the rust and forming the polymer, which will allow scientists to more easily manipulate and engineer the structures of the materials they make.