By Susan Kraemer •
October 5, 2009
Coal power is not base-load electricity by itself. To enable coal to reliably deliver electric power, it took the creation of an entire other national infrastructure; the trans-continental railroad system.
Without the unceasing rail-car-load delivery, every 12 hours, on the hour, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year, of every next 12-hour-supply of fuel for the fire; the fire would go out, the water wouldn’t boil, the steam wouldn’t rise, the turbine wouldn’t turn; the next [...]
By Susan Kraemer •
August 31, 2009
As PG&E ramps up renewable power in response to the California RPS requirement that it get 33% of its electricity from renewables by 2020; it has been exploring ways to add that much renewable power to the grid while smoothing out the ups and downs of wind energy, which often peaks at night.
The utility needs a way to turn sometimes-too-much wind into anytime-always-there electricity.
The solution? Simple tech. Underground compressed air.
With compressed air energy storage; air is compressed and then pumped in natural underground reservoirs. The air is released later and converted into electricity. With enough storage, even fickle wind could actually supply base-load power.
So PG&E has applied for DOE smart grid stimulus funding under The Recovery Act; to build a compressed air energy storage project with output capacity of 300 megawatts. They are applying for $25 million.
By comparison, building a plant to burn fossil fuels would cost around $850 million for the same 300 megawatts of fossil energy.
