Peak Wind and Compressed Air Storage
The thought of buying more batteries to store energy is like standing in front of the Energizer Battery display at Walmart wondering how many do I need? The word, Why also comes to mind? When am I going to switch to a better technology? Why isn’t it here?
Well I’m sure you noticed how much cheaper the regular batteries have become. Although still expensive, the manufacturers have yet to only offer rechargeables. Maybe it’s too inventory? I don’t know. What I do know is that we don’t get “greener” by buying batteries.
At my neighbors, we’ve got sixteen 8D batteries charging and discharging constantly. One year, two year, fours years and before you know it, they’re ready for the landfill. Ugh! Gel-cells in a landfill? No not us. But I’m sure that if everyone in Puna bout two new 6volt golf cart batteries, installed and used them for ten years, a large number of those batteries will find themselves in the landfill. The Mallard 800 wind mill outside isn’t moving today.
Wind power is unpredictable and has always had the same stigma… You have to store the battery so you can use the lights at night when the wind stops blowing.Then I came across this company that stores the energy as compressed air. To be honest, I haven’t studies the technology, the benefits or the trade-offs. I did notice that General Compression is targeting larger installations so you probably won’t find this sort of thing in your of garage for a while. Although I’m 100% certain that someone could build this on a smaller scale.
That’s for you to do. We don’t build or even review all the technologies we promote here in the Green Blog. We’re waay to caught up in watching the fractals in the sipral out of control. Harnessing that energy would surely cause us to get excited.
But this wind technology looks pretty kewl. If anyone from General Compression wants to speak at one of our events or needs a remote treehouse installation, test site, we have some friends you should meet. You may also want to talk to our friends at the Natural Energy Lab in Kona.
General Compression – wind energy on demand.
Learn more with these compressed air resources compiled by Green Collar Technologies
Wikipedia definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage
R-Squared Energy Blog (good article)
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/compressed-air-energy-storage.html
U.S. Department of Energy – Technologies
http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/compressed_air.html
American Institute of Physics
http://www.aip.org/isns/reports/2001/025.html
Energy Density of Some Materials Chart
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/2001/ph162/l10.html
