XML FeedsCan Solar Farms Get Energy Storage for Free? - Xtreme Power says its battery packs can do double time as grid balancing assets.
By CostBenefit on Jan 24, 2011 | In General, Energy, U.S., Companies,CSR,Business,Finance, Newspaper/Mag/TV/Media Story, Costs and Benefits
Link: http://www.greentechmedia.com
According to Michael Kanellos writing at http://www.greentechmedia.com on January 24, 2011:The company has created a battery-based storage system for wind farms and solar parks that can also provide grid balancing services, according to CEO Carlos Coe.... Using Xtreme's systems to turn a wind farm from an intermittent source of power into a well-managed source of power would add approximately 0.5 cents to 1 cent per kilowatt hour to the cost of the power flowing from the wind farm.
"The maximum would probably be as much as 2 cents per kilowatt hour," said Coe in an interview....
The storage facility itself makes the power plant more valuable because it dampens the inherently intermittent output of wind and solar....
"Grid balancing services can more than offset the cost of putting it in. ... It will make most of its money from providing grid regulation services."
"What we are competing with in that regard is single and combined-cycle natural gas plants," ...
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The company has won four contracts to insert its storage system into wind parks in Hawaii. The latest deal involves a 10-megawatt storage array for a 21-megawatt wind farm in Hawaii. ...
Customers can buy storage systems outright or they can get the systems installed under storage-as-a-service contracts, which is becoming increasingly popular in the storage world. ... Other competing technologies include flow batteries and sodium batteries. ... The battery was originally developed by Tracor and Ford Aerospace in the early '90s to go inside electric cars. After that wave of EVs died, ... Xtreme spun it out and finalized development in the past few years....
The old batteries can be recycled. AES Energy Storage just recently unfurled an 8-megawatt storage facility in New York state that will grow to 20 megawatts this year....
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Sam Jaffe, research manager for renewable and distributed energy strategies at IDC Insights, says that the technology is compelling but the cost targets might be a bit premature. "I have confidence that Xtreme can get production costs at scale to $500 per kilowatt hour, based on discussions with people who know the company well. But 'at scale' is the key term. They were supposed to build a factory in Michigan that could produce a gigawatt per year, but that didn't happen," Jaffe wrote. "They are not selling their battery systems for $500/kWh today, that's for sure. The Hawaii project is probably priced at four to six times that."
by Michael Kanellos
FOR FULL STORY GO TO HERE
January 24, 2011
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