Power Storage

A123 Opens Largest Battery Plant in North America

Megan Treacy

a123-plant
A123 Systems has opened a new lithium-ion battery plant in Livonia, Michigan. Based on capacity, it's the largest battery plant in North America.

The new plant is 291,000 square feet and is designed to house the entire production process from R&D to manufacture of individual components and all the way through final assembly of battery packs. The facility will increase the company's production by 600 MWh per year, making its overall cell assembly capacity reach 760 MWh a year by 2011.

The company received a $249 million grant from the DOE as part of its program to drive innovation in battery technology. It also received $125 million in incentives from the state of Michigan as part of a job creation program. With that funding behind them, the company will be opening more facilities to ramp up production, including a coating plant in Romulus, Michigan that will be completed early next year.

via Treehugger

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Philadelphia Subway Feeding Braking Energy to Grid

Megan Treacy

philly-regen-braking
When a subway train pulls into a station, it produces two things: a loud screeching sound and lots of kinetic energy. The Philadelphia subway is putting that second thing to good use by capturing the kinetic energy produced when trains put on the brakes.

A 1.5-MW regenerative braking system will be installed along the Market-Frankford line, which has the highest ridership in the city. A huge battery will capture the kinetic energy that will then be used by trains accelerating out of the stations, stored for future use or fed to the grid. The Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority will have the option to either use the power produced or sell it to the local utility.

The trains already use regenerative braking on a smaller scale but half of the energy is lost as heat. This pilot program is aiming to dramatically increase the power captured.

The project should be completed by next spring and could save the transit authority $500,000 in energy costs. If all Philadelphia stations were outfitted with the system, energy consumption could be cut by 40 percent.

via Wired Autopia

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Senate Legislation Proposes $1.5 Billion for Energy Storage Tax Credits

Philip Proefrock

STORAGE-2010

Three U.S. senators have introduced a bill to promote electric grid energy storage projects. The Storage Technology of Renewable and Green Energy Act of 2010 ("STORAGE 2010 Act") would provide tax credits worth as much as $1.5 billion for grid storage projects.

In addition to providing credits for utility scale projects, the bill also has provisions for businesses and homeowners who want to have on-site energy storage, whether or not they also have on-site renewable energy generation of their own. Grid scale projects could qualify for a 20% tax credit of up to $30 million, and individual projects could qualify for a 30% tax credit of up to $1 million.

Projects would be selected by the Energy Secretary based on their commercial viability and would look to those that "provide the greatest increase of reliability or economic benefit, that enable the greatest improvement in integration of renewable energy resources with the grid, or that enable the greatest increase in efficiency in grid operation."

Encouraging increased grid storage capacity is meant to help further the adoption of intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Grid storage should also help in furthering a more reliable smart grid for national energy distribution.

image: CC 2.0 by -5m

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Lithium-Ion Battery Prices Set to Drop

Megan Treacy

battery-production
It looks like supply and demand is working out in the consumers' favor when it comes to lithium-ion batteries. Production has been ramping up for the batteries as more electric cars go into production and that has led to an oversupply that may just keep piling up. Analysts are predicting a price drop of between 19 and 25 percent by the end of the year -- a slash that could also spell cheaper electric cars in the very near future.

Battery makers in Japan and Korea, like Samsung and Panasonic, account for 75 percent of the world's production, and they've been competing to get the largest share of a market that could triple over the next six years. This production and pricing war has created a glut of batteries and, luckily for consumers, a falling price.

Many first generation electric vehicles are going on sale in the coming months. I won't be surprised if the second generations, much like we've seen with later generation hybrids, include a cheaper price tag.

via Treehugger

image via GM

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20 MW Flywheel Energy Storage Plant Coming to NY

Megan Treacy

flywheel-plant
The world's first grid-scale flywheel plant is opening in Stephentown, New York by the end of this year. The plant, being built by Beacon Power, will store excess energy from the grid as kinetic energy that will be tapped for electricity when other sources are overloaded or unavailable.

The flywheel works by using quickly rotating carbon-fiber rims to store the excess energy as kinetic energy. The rims spin on magnetic bearings in a vacuum to reduce energy loss from friction.

This power storage technology will provide 10 percent of the state's energy frequency regulation needs and reduce CO2 emissions by up to 82 percent over a 20-year span. By storing excess energy in the form of clean, kinetic energy, the plant will prevent extra emission-creating sources of electricity from being used during peak energy-use hours.

The flywheel is also a faster source of energy regulation because it can fluctuate 10 times more quickly than traditional sources to respond to increasing or decreasing energy demands. The plant can respond to power demands in four seconds and run at maximum output for 15 minutes.

The first four MW of energy storage should be up and running by the end of the year, with the additional 16 MW following soon thereafter.

via Inhabitat

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