Excess Wind Power Stored as Hydrogen in the German City of Herten
Posted on 9 May '12 by Mircea, under New Concepts. No Comments.
Storing excess intermittent renewable energy became these days a problem that everyone wants to solve. We need so much to switch from conventional electricity to solar or wind power but as I said before, renewable energy is currently facing some practical problems that we need to fix.
So, as a solution to the wind power storage problem, I will present today a new interesting concept: excess wind power stored as hydrogen and then converted back into electricity when is needed.
Since they were built for the first time, wind turbines had problems with storing excess electricity produced on windy days. After many years of searching and hundreds of calculations, researchers came up with a smart idea that could solve the energy storage problem: the Underwater Energy Bag.
Aiming to harness more offshore wind power, the UK decided to work with the US government on a new concept: the floating offshore wind farm. Being designed for reliability, high efficiency and easy maintenance, these new floating turbines could significantly reduce the current high cost of offshore wind.
A few months ago, the Blimp Wind Turbine was just a strange wind generator prototype and to be honest, I never thought it would be taken seriously. Well, I was wrong, because a wind energy company formed out of MIT, recently proved that the Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) can be successfully used to generate power at high altitudes.
Assembling a large wind turbine is not as easy as it seems. It involves team work, precision and a lot of patience. This work has to be done carefully, because even a small mistake could lead to an irreversible accident and of course, to loss of money.
Have you ever heard about a wind turbine that can do more than generating renewable energy? To be honest, I didn’t know about such thing. But a few days ago I found an article about a new wind turbine that can both produce electricity and clean water in desert regions. Built by Eole Water company, this turbine already proved to be very efficient in the arid regions of Abu Dhabi.
Harnessing wind energy at high altitude. It sounds great isn’t it? Actually this is the title of a very interesting article, that I have recently found online. It is about a new prototype generator developed at RMIT University, able to produce energy at high altitudes.