A power utility is installing gigantic sodium sulfur batteries that
store 7 MWH each. It also plans to use customer's PHEV as temporary
storage. See:
Utility Will Use Batteries to Store Wind Power
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/business/11battery.html
AEP to Deploy Additional Large-Scale Batteries on Distribution Grid
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/CLTU05611092007-1.htm
Quote from ref # 1:
"A.E.P. intends to have 1,000 megawatts of energy storage on its
system in the next decade, according to the company, and at least 25
megawatts from batteries of this type.
A range of options is available for the remainder of the storage,
including the use of plug-in hybrid cars, Mr. English said. The idea
behind plug-in hybrids is that the owner of a car would charge the
batteries every night when demand and cost of electricity were low.
The next day, under a contract between the utility company and the
driver, the car would be left plugged when not in use, and the power
company could reverse the flow of electricity and draw power out of
its batteries during times of peak demand. Enough power would be left
in the batteries to start the engine, so that a driver returning to a
drained car could still run it on gasoline until the batteries could
be charged again at night. It would take more than 1,000 such
vehicles to equal one of the sodium-sulfur batteries, however."
In a related development, EEStor's supercapacitor has been in the
mainstream news a lot lately. That would be way better than sodium
sulfur batteries that operate at 800 deg F and are only 80% efficient
full cycle.
- Jed
