Storage is needed to harvest the full yield available from intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar. One of the options is compressed-air storage; till now only possible in underground caverns. But SustainX Energy Solutions; a Dartmouth College start-up that got $4 million in VC funding from Polaris Venture Partners and Rockport Capital this year is working on compressing and storing air in cheap off-the-shelf shipping containers.
Over the next two years SustainX will try to develop a way to cram 4 megawatt-hours worth of stored energy into each 40-foot long container and to reduce the energy that it currently takes to compress and release air by about 70%.
The goal? A renewable energy storage system with the portability and scalability of a battery and the economy and capacity of a cave. Make that a portable cave.
Recently, MIT discovered a revolutionary method for solar energy storage. And now, less than a month later, a method for wind power storage is being explored.
Earlier today, Public Service Enterprise Group Global announced that it is joining with Michael Nakhamkin to create a company called Energy Storage and Power that will develop new ways to trap wind power in underground reservoirs.
Compressed air storage technology isn’t new, but it has been ignored for many years. Now it’s being rediscovered thanks to the prolific growth of wind turbines and high oil and natural gas prices.
In January, Scientific American writers unleashed an ambitious plan to halt global warming, eliminate our dependence on petroleum and the substantial trade deficit, boost the economy and create 3 million jobs, and brighten the dismal forecasts for the mid twenty-first century.
The plan is conceptually simple but would be substantial to implement:
Construct a 30,000 square mile array of solar panels in the Southwest,
