Aug
19
A Look A Lithium Accumulators
August 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Many of us are familiar with accumulators in gas and hydraulic systems as a vessel that stores a volume usually with an internal diaphragm that has a spring force by a compressed gas. The result is a cell that can buffer the system gases or fluids smoothing pressure spikes.
As a practical point though, a lithium [...]
Aug
1
Will EEStor Move The Earth?
August 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This week saw EEStor CEO and president Richard Weir, who is also a co-inventor, announce that its processes and equipment have apparently been verified by Ed Golla, lab director of Texas Research International, a multidisciplinary research, development and testing company in Austin, Texas. EEStor added that Ian Treviranus of Horiba Instruments says the company’s technology [...]
Jul
29
A Compressed Air Energy Storage Reality Check
July 29, 2008 | 1 Comment
A guest author going by Libelle posted a piece titled “Compressed Air Energy Storage – How Viable Is It?” Sunday at TheOilDrum, Canada. It’s a top-flight review of the physics and explains the thermodynamics in a quaint, easy to grasp way.
Libelle suggests that raising the elevation of water might be more effective. From here on [...]
Jul
22
The Battery Reality Check
July 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Almost everyone coming here has a firm idea that battery technology is a critical part of the changes we need to see for a healthy economy. There is a lot going on in the research and development field. We’re going to look into one in a moment, but first lets have a reality check on [...]
Jul
7
The Quickening of Recharge
July 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, a worldwide venture capital firm and SET Venture Partners announced an investment in Epyon B.V. a spin-off company of Delft University of Technology. The Epyon investment is a play in fast charging of lithium-ion battery technology and the selection by the venture firms is based on Epyon’s experience and developments in [...]
Jul
1
Greater Expectations
July 1, 2008 | 4 Comments
The bad news is piling up and making many feel that the way out isn’t in sight. I saw a poll earlier today that reported on folk’s feelings of hopelessness and wish now I’d kept the link, as it’s bugged me all day. Hard numbers will do to support the sensation; in 1970 3/4ths of [...]
Jun
20
Storing The Power Of The Wind
June 20, 2008 | 1 Comment
The wind blows at its own time and not necessarily when people need the power from the turbine. That makes energy storage for wind power production an important field. Wind turbines are going up at incredible rates worldwide and offer another problem besides the storage issue – the intermittentcy in very widely disbursed wind farms [...]
May
29
Set Speed – Touch Here
May 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The batteries are good enough – at least A123 Systems has batteries that will make the cut and there are likely more to come. A123 Systems is shipping their lithium based technology to Black and Decker for their professional line of power tools. These tools are said to be even more powerful than [...]
May
13
So, How Much Electricity to End Gasoline?
May 13, 2008 | 4 Comments
One blogger I admire is Robert Rapier who writes the R-Squared Blog who posted on Monday about the solar base of electricity needed to displace the equivalent of today’s gasoline use. It is an interesting concept that is rife with problems of equivalency.
The U.S. is reported to be going through 389 million gallons of [...]
Apr
30
The Biggest Electricity User Is . . .
April 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
The past few years have seen the U.S. State of California come up short on electrical power generation. Not a huge, but a seriously annoying and disruptive set of events. More illustrative might be the events currently going on in South Africa.
While rich in hard minerals like gold, palladium, platinum, coal, diamonds and [...]
