Catching solar energy with salt balls
IVAN PENN
The New York Times News Service
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Last updated
To Florida’s big utilities, the Sunshine State isn’t as bright as its nickname indicates.
Too cloudy. Too hazy. Too much darkness. It just doesn’t have the pounding rays of, say, Arizona or parts of California.
As such, the reasoning goes, the Sort of Sunny State isn’t great for solar energy – unless someone develops storage technology to overcome those limitations.
His solution: salt-filled ceramic balls that can turn water into steam for hours after the sun disappears. The steam powers turbines that produce electricity, in much the same way as burning coal.Enter Yogi Goswami, an internationally renowned mechanical engineer at the University of South Florida.
Dr. Goswami, 65, isn’t the only researcher to develop a solar thermal storage technology for renewable energies. And he’s not the only one to use salt as a main component.
But he has devised a way to concentrate the energy storage into golf ball-size capsules that even at high volumes take up little space, reduce costs and last longer than other technologies so far.
“We think that this has a bright future,” Dr. Goswami says. “For solar, in my view, [storage] is essential.”
Storing power
In the renewable energy world, building a cost-effective, utility-scale system that can store solar power for hours at a time is a Holy Grail of sorts.
“That will be a game changer,” Duke Energy Florida president R. Alexander “Alex” Glenn told state lawmakers last spring. “Storage is going to be critical.”
A race is on to develop the best technology. A few systems are already in use or being tested.
Duke Energy for instance operates one of the nation’s largest storage technologies at its Notrees Battery Storage Project that uses lead-acid battery blocks at a wind farm in Texas.
Arizona’s Solana Generating Station already uses a salt-based storage system that powers two 140-megawatt turbines that generate electricity for as long as six hours after sunset. The system produces enough power for 70,000 Arizona Public Service customers.
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