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The power in building bigger batteries
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EDITOR'S NOTE: The audio version of this story incorrectly identifies the Electric Power Research Institute. The correction has been made in the transcript below.
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Crude prices dropped today, down about five percent amid reports U.S. consumers just haven't been using as much of it. There will come a time when we won't be able to use oil, either because it's all gone or because it's gotten too expensive. When that day comes the clean-energy business hopes to be ready. Actually, it hopes to be ready long before that day comes.
But first, it needs to solve a fundamental problem: How to store the power it creates from wind or from the sun. Think batteries. Really big batteries. From the Marketplace Sustainability Desk, Sam Eaton reports.
SAM EATON: If the University of California at San Diego were a city, its energy policies would be among the most forward-looking in the nation. Its electrical grid is computerized for maximum efficiency. And virtually every parking structure here is plastered with giant solar panels. Byron Washom leads the university's effort to wean itself off fossil fuels.
BYRON WASHOM: We really are on the order of five to seven years ahead of what the utility industry might be looking at in the not too distant future.
But Washom says the more UC San Diego relies on renewable energy, the tougher it is to maintain a consistent power supply. He whips out a laptop and logs onto a digital power meter for the solar panels we're standing under.
WASHOM: You see on this particular graphic where we had our typical morning of coastal fog.
Electricity output from the solar panels barely makes a blip on the chart.
WASHOM: And then at 9:30 the fog burned off and within about a five minute period it just had a five- times jump in production.
This is the Achilles heel of renewable energy. Solar panels and wind turbines only generate power when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. But Washom says if you could store all that electricity in a giant battery so it could be used when it's most needed...problem solved.
WASHOM: It's the missing link.
And dozens of companies like Solar Reserve, in southern California, are rushing to develop ways to store electricity. Bill Gould is the company's Chief Technology Officer.
BILL GOULD: Our product uses the sun to collect energy and then we store it as heat in large tanks filled with molten salt.
That heat is then used to generate power later in the day when demand peaks. Other companies are betting on technologies like massive lithium-ion batteries that could power entire cities. Or compressed air from wind turbines that's stored in underground caves. Haresh Kamath is with the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit, utility-funded research group.
HARESH KAMATH: It's a brand new market with no significant players in it at the moment that dominate that market. So it's a very big opportunity for anybody who can rise to the challenge.
And an increasingly lucrative one. Today University of California, San Diego, announced it's taking bids to build a $3.4 million energy-storage facility on campus.
There are also billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds set aside for developing the technology. And it's been one of the few bright spots among venture capitalists, drawing more investment than any other clean-energy sector in recent years. But Kamath says progress is still too slow.
KAMATH: What we really want to see are pilot projects. Projects where you're actually addressing a need and showing that storage can do the job.
Like the one being planned in San Diego. Byron Washom takes me to other side of campus where the new storage facility will be built.
WASHOM: This is going to be the Kitty Hawk of sustainability over the next five years.
Washom checks his watch and excuses himself for another meeting. The university's push to make renewable energy more dependable is attracting attention from all over the world.
WASHOM: This afternoon I have a delegation from the leading Chinese battery storage manufactures to come visit the campus.
EATON: So the word's out?
WASHOM: There's an expression in the south and that is everybody smells meat-a-frying.
In San Diego, I'm Sam Eaton for Marketplace.
We must not buy into the myth that our power grid is antiquated or new power plants are needed to meet up and coming demand. We really are on the verge on each and every home becoming it's own power producer. Costco now has a solar kit on display for under $300- I hope the "Enrons" are shaking in their boots.
This is an interesting story and only a small picture of the market opportunities being created by higher educations push towards climate neutrality. UCSD (and the entire UC system), including nearly 650 institutions across the country have signed onto the American College & University Presidents'Climate Commitment (ACUPCC)http://presidentsclimatecommitment.org/ A commitment aimed at eliminating GHG emissions and provided the skills and knowledge for graduates to help society do the same. Much of initiative is funded through corporate sponsorships. Businesses that provide energy services, renewable energy technologies, building solutions, and so on have jumped on this opportunity to showcase their products and services and most importantly to work with college and universities to help tailor programs that will prepare graduates for working in the developing green technology and service based economy. For example Arizona State University led by President Michael Crow (ACUPCC Chair) has been making great efforts in sustainability, including creating the School of Sustainability and Co-leading the effort on developing Wal-Marts 'sustainability index' http://www.sustainabilityconsortium.org/ These efforts are happening on hundreds of campuses within hundreds of communities across the United States.
The big question I have about this report is what has changed that will make this possible? There are lots of people that have been working on the "battery problem" for a long time. The innovation here seems to be combining them into really big batteries. This strategy will be doomed to failure (with or without government funding) unless someone develops a better battery that can make everything from a cell phone run to San Diego run longer.
Your report over looked the largest batteries in world, the pump-storage hydroelectric facilities like the one's in the Sierra Nevada at Helms Creek (PG&E) and Dinkey Creek (SCE). These facilities were built to store off peak power from Nuclear Power Plants, like Diablo Canyon (PG&E)and San Onofre (SCE). Of course these "batteries" and power plants are far apart and require substantial power transmission lines to wheel the power back and forth. The big benefit of the technology described in your report is the ability to store power near the potential demand for that power no matter where the power is produced. That means less need to build more long distance power transmission lines. And that would be a huge benefit to states like California. --Clay Brandow in Davis, CA.
