By Paul Rincon, Science editor, BBC News website
US researchers have made an important step forward in the quest to store electricity from intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar.
A Harvard University team came up with a way to drive down the cost of flow battery technology, which is capable of storing energy on large scales – within an electrical power grid, for example. Grid-scale storage for renewables could be a game-changer – making wind and solar more economical and reliable.
Read more » BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25674738
Germany’s solar power plants produced a record 22 gigawatts of energy on Friday, equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear plants. The country is already a world-leader in solar power and hopes to be free of nuclear energy by 2022.
The director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, northeast Germany, said the solar power delivered to the national grid on Saturday met 50 per cent of the nation’s energy quota.
“Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity. Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over,” Norbert Allnoch told Reuters news agency.
The German government decided to turn its back on nuclear energy last year after the Fukushima disaster and plans to be nuclear-free by 2022. Critics have rounded on the initiative, skeptical that renewable sources can meet the nation’s growing energy needs.
“This shows Germany is capable of meeting a large share of its electricity needs with solar power. It also shows Germany can do with fewer coal-burning power plants, gas-burning plants and nuclear plants,” stressed Allmoch. ….
Read more » The Idealist Revolution
http://www.theidealistrevolution.com/going-nuclear-free-germany-smashes-solar-power-world-record/
What’s the key to using alternative energy, like solar and wind? Storage — so we can have power on tap even when the sun’s not out and the wind’s not blowing. In this accessible, inspiring talk, Donald Sadoway takes to the blackboard to show us the future of large-scale batteries that store renewable energy. As he says: “We need to think about the problem differently. We need to think big.
Courtesy: Ted.com » YouTube
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