Wind turbines, with Mount Adams in the backdrop. A new report from Stanford researchers says it won't pencil out to store surplus wind power in grid-scale batteries.
Amelia Templeton / OPB
Take a trip along the Columbia River, with its massive hydroelectric dams and wind turbine-studded landscape, and you can see that the Northwest is home to an abundance of naturally occurring energy.
But when the wind is blowing and the river is flowing, nature can produce more energy than we can put on the grid to light our homes, operate our TVs and power our industries.
Researchers have been trying to figure out how to store all that abundance of energy so it can be there when we need it. That would also prevent the conflict that sometimes occurs when there's so much power on the grid from hydro-dams that wind farms are forced to curtail production.
They've looked into massive battery storage systems and a clever way to convert surplus wind energy into compressed air that can generate electricity on demand.
New research from Stanford scientists is less than encouraging, however, when it comes to the cost benefits of using batteries to store wind power.
This Stanford University article breaks it down, explaining how the costs of building grid-scale battery storage actually pencils out when it comes to storing solar power. It also shows that the same math doesn't work out in favor of building energy storage systems for wind farms.
Postdoctoral scholar Michael Dale, a co-author of the study, distills it all down with this nifty analogy. He compares building grid-scale batteries for wind to buying a safe for a wristwatch.
"You wouldn't spend a $100 on a safe to store a $10 watch," he said. "Likewise, it's not sensible to build energetically expensive batteries for an energetically cheap resource like wind.”
_-- David Steves_