Germans Get Paid To Consume Surplus Energy From Wind Farms
8 May 2010 | Wind Power | 1 Comment
A rather strange consequence of the inability of electricity providers to store the surplus energy gained from wind power occurs in northern Germany, where local inhabitants are getting paid for “forgetting” the lights on. The country’s 21,000 wind turbines produces so much power that the providers were “forced” to lower the bills in order to use this “extra” energy.
At times, windmills were even temporarily turned off, which sounds pretty unreasonable for a energy operator. It seems these companies have alone done them self harm, as total spending money for electricity in Germany will be shortened by 5 billion euros in a few years.
Panasonic’s Li-ion Battery Can Store Electricity for One Week of Use
27 December 2009 | Green Technology | 1 Comment
When we talk about energy storage and batteries, we often think of those devices which helps us to power our gadgets. So, we use batteries for mobile phones, laptops, but could we use batteries to power an entire building? Panasonic Company says “Yes”! They recently announced the launch of a lithium-ion storage battery for home use. After they bought 50% stake in Sanyo, Fumio Otsubo, president of Panasonic said: “We’ll be the first to bring to the market a storage battery for home use, which can store sufficient electricity for about one week of use”.
Algae Being Used For Making Ultra-Thin Batteries
30 November 2009 | Green Technology | 2 Comments
Algae come in great variety and are one of the most abundant life forms on the planet, so it would be very unpractical, not to find a use for them, even in today’s technologized world. But people have acknowledged the great potential of this organism, and after trying to develop a algae-based biofuel or building solar cells out of single-celled algae its time for the algaes to get involved in creating biodegradable batteries.
IceBank – Storing Wind Energy As Ice
27 November 2009 | Green Technology | No Comments
People are always searching for more efficient and economical solutions, always trying to keep things simple but also with a thought on energy costs. From an early time, man used ice to keep their food cooled. The ice was collected at so called “ice harvesting” sites and was the only way to refrigerate food, until the discovery of electricity.
High-Energy Storage – Rechargeable Zinc-Air Batteries To Be Soon Available
7 November 2009 | Green Technology | No Comments
Some recent developments have brought to life new technologies for building a more efficient battery. ReVolt, a Swiss company announced that they managed to develop a rechargeable zinc-air battery that can store, by volume, three times more energy than the common lithium-ion battery, but in the same time, reducing the costs by half.