What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

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reikiman
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What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

SoCal Edison Wants A123 to Build Biggest Grid Battery Ever
http://seekingalpha.com/article/158250-socal-edison-wants-a123-to-build-biggest-grid-battery-ever

The story talks about how Southern Cal Edison has some wind power plant they'll build by 2015 and are looking at power storage systems to store electricity and release for later. Wind power is intermittent and isn't necessarily going to be available when it's most needed (at 3:30 pm on hot summer afternoons).

They're looking for a DOE grant "to build the world's biggest lithium-ion grid storage battery" which are targeted to draw from the "$615 million smart grid demonstration grant program created in June". They "wants A123 to assemble a 32-megawatt-hour battery out of racks of smaller batteries in a 8,000-square-foot building at a substation in the Tehachapi Mountains. That battery would stabilize the flow of wind power from the mountains to the utility's load centers to the west and south, De Martini said."

DaveAK
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Re: What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

Is lithium ion the right battery technology for this kind of application? Not saying that it isn't, 'cause I really have no clue.

reikiman
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Re: What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

I don't know either - the article made it sound like it was a prototype to find out. There's other ways to store 'energy' ... e.g. one thing that's done in California is to pump water at night uphill into reservoirs in the mountains, and then during the day to release the water through the turbines. It time-shifts night-time electricity a lot of which just goes to waste anyway. I recall another company with an idea of using electricity to compress air, then later release the air through a turbine.

jdh2550_1
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Re: What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

Yeah they do the pump up hill and release thing in Wales too (where I'm from originally).

A while back I read an article about a case study for a big wind farm on the west coast of Ireland (harvesting all that lovely North Atlantic wind!) I think they were using some form of large liquid based battery. I'll see if I can find the info again (seeing as my laptop HDD just quit the chances of this are slim to none!)

John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.

juanito
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Re: What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

Instead of lithium batteries, another electrical storage powerful enough might be a Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES). If ultracapacitors were further advanced they would be a good option too. Another concept is a flywheel in a vacuum chamber.

juanito
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Re: What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

Any electrochemical energy storage will wear out faster than other forms of energy storage and will need to be replaced. For an example the best LiFePO4 batteries you can buy are rated up to 2,000 cycles. Thin cell lithium may go as high as 45,000 cycles. But ultracapacitors and SMES's can be rated at millions of cycles. I wonder how many "cycles" a reservoir could be rated at?

MikeB
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Re: What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

What would you do with a 32 megawatt-hour battery pack?

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'd hook it up to a 32 megawatt laser, and go for an hour-long slice & dice spree. Probably carve my initials on the Moon, too. :)

My electric vehicle: CuMoCo C130 scooter.

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