Home: Renewable Energy News: Thursday 06 August, 2009

Renewable Energy News

THURSDAY 06 AUGUST, 2009 |

Spinning Batteries - Flywheel Energy Storage

Flywheel battery
Beacon Power Corp. in the USA recently completed connection of a second megawatt of flywheel energy storage to the New England power grid. The new system provides frequency regulation services.

Operators of power grids need to maintain electric frequency very close to 60 hertz (Hz), or cycles per second (50 Hz in Europe and elsewhere). When the supply of electricity exactly matches the load, the grid is considered stable. Maintaining this stability comes at a cost of around one percent of total generation capacity to increase or decrease power output in response to frequency deviations and in doing so, creates greater wear and tear on equipment and greater quantities of carbon dioxide and other emissions. Beacon's advanced flywheel-based energy storage technology perform fast-response frequency regulation to help mitigate some of these issues.

Flywheels are an alternative to deep cycle batteries or molten salt for storing energy that can be transformed into electricity. Flywheel energy storage works by accelerating a rotor (flywheel) to incredibly high speeds and maintaining the energy in the system as rotational energy, which is converted back by slowing down the flywheel.

Beacon's Smart Energy 25 flywheel is sealed in a vacuum chamber and spins between 8,000 and 16,000 rpm. At 16,000 rpm the flywheel can store and deliver 25 kWh of extractable energy. At 16,000 rpm, the surface speed of the rim would be approximately Mach 2 - or about 2,400 kmh. The vacuum chamber reduces friction and energy losses and the rotor is also levitated with a combination of permanent magnets and an electromagnetic bearing.

Flywheel energy storage may form an important part of ensuring baseload energy supply from solar power and wind energy in the future. Kinetic energy can be stored in banks of flywheels while conditions are optimal, to be tapped and converted to electricity during the night, on heavily overcast days or in calm conditions.

Global Peak Oil In 10 Years - IEA Sounds Alarm

Global peak oil rapidly approaching
In an interview with the UK's The Independent, Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), sounded an alarm that global oil production is likely to peak in around 10 years; far earlier than most governments had foreseen. The International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental organisation which acts as energy policy advisor to 28 member countries, including Australia.

According to the first detailed assessment of hundreds of oil fields around the world representing 75% of global reserves, the biggest fields have already peaked a and the rate of decline in oil production is now running at close to double calculations of a couple of years ago.

The IEA believes the decline in oil production in existing fields is now around 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline estimate of 2007.

Dr. Birol stated in the interview that even if demand for oil were to remain steady, the equivalent of four Saudi Arabias would need to be discovered to maintain production - an unlikely development.

The shortage of easily accessed oil is fueling fears other methods of oil extraction will increase, such as those used in Canada's tar sands operations. This not only means an environmental disaster for such areas through the stripping large swathes of forest and poisoning the land, but extraction of oil from tar sands is extremely water and energy intensive, meaning even more generation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr. Birol warns that governments are not prepared for the rapidly approaching oil crunch and environmental groups believe the situation should create an even higher sense of urgency within governments to switch to clean and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. With some forecasting oil to skyrocket to hundreds of dollars a barrel, renewable energy will not only provide a greener and cleaner option, but a cheaper one.

While governments may be somewhat oblivious to the looming oil crisis, and one unlike others there will no rebound from, executives in the oil industry aren't - a survey run last year found only 23 percent believed that oil will still be the cheapest source of energy 25 years from now; representing a massive 48 percent drop over the previous survey.