Beyond lithium-ion batteries

Bloomberg

As Tesla founder Elon Musk promises to change the world, starting with giant battery factory in the Nevada desert, investors from Toronto to Tokyo are quietly developing the next-generation technologies that may actually get him there.
Batteries, especially the lithium-ion variety used in mobile phones and electric cars, are likely to dominate the $44 billion or more spent on energy storage by 2024, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Trouble is, they’re not the solution to all needs. As well as the environmental impact of mining lithium, which has been blamed for starving flamingos in northern Chile, batteries lose their charge over time. They can balance minute-to-minute shifts in supply. But they can’t absorb solar power generated in summer, say, and deliver it in winter.
“We’re going to need a whole range of solutions to keep the lights on,” said Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “If your problem is that the sun doesn’t shine in winter, are you really going to buy a battery, charge it once a year during summer and use it once a year in winter? I don’t think so. You can’t just jump to batteries as the single solution.”
Storage devices are crucial to expanding the wind and solar industries and curtailing pollution because they allow what’s generated now to be consumed later. Just as refrigeration changed the way we handled food in the 20th century, energy storage will give grid operators and rooftop-solar consumers flexibility about when to use the power they produce — reducing the number of big power plants the world needs. Here’s the leading energy storage projects on the drawing board that go beyond lithium-ion batteries:

HYDROPOWER
Long before batteries, electricity was stored through plants that pump water uphill to a reservoir and release it through turbines when it’s needed. It’s long-lived enough to be hold solar power generated in the summer for use in the winter. Hydropower is renewable energy’s oldest technology and accounts for well over 90 percent of energy storage, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. As well as classic hydroelectric stations, tidal lagoons may also offer energy storage in a similar way by holding water for short periods, according to Tidal Lagoon Power Ltd., which is planning to build six lagoons around the U.K. coast line. Trains can double as storage. In April, Advanced Rail Energy Storage won approval from the Nevada Bureau of Land Management for a $55 million project using rail locomotives.
ARES will build a 6-mile uphill rail corridor involving heavily-loaded trains. When power’s cheap, trains will be pushed up a hill. When the power is needed, they’ll be released down when power’s needed, supplying it back to the grid through an overhead wire.
Chief Executive Officer Jim Kelly reckons the system can be deployed at about 60 percent of the cost of an equivalent pumped-hydro facility. The nine-month construction program is expected to start in the second quarter of 2017. Once complete, it could run for 40 years.

AIR STORAGE
Compressed air storage sequesters a gas underground so it can be released later to drive a generation turbine whenever needed. One project in Toronto sends the air underwater where it’s stored in balloons. When demand for power rises, the air comes back to the surface through a pipe, where it’s converted into electricity.
Compressed air storage requires a specific type of rock formation. The world has a handful of existing projects — one in Huntorf, Germany and another in McIntosh, Alabama. Several large scale projects have been put on ice, including the Iowa Stored Energy Plant near Des Moines and Dresser-Rand Group’s 317-megawatt Apex Bethel Energy Center in Anderson County, Texas.