Energy storing solutions for grid peak demand backup.

No system alone is good enough, what you need is a combination that could be used both on short peak and on lung run wind/sun absence, something stable and reusable.

Batteries are not the answer, they have a prohibitive acquisition price, huge maintenance costs and expensive to dispose, not to mention a brief life span (4 to 7 years in the best cases)

But they are excellent to cover instantaneous peak request before other larger backup systems start producing (matter of minutes or at most half a hour)

Another backup is the hydro pumping storage, fantastic for long run, covers in lack of wind if you have enough storage, and many times you don't need to produce power to pump it up, you can dedicate some on the shore mills to direct mechanical pumping, saving some % of loss in the conversions.

Another tech is High Concentration Sun Temperature storage (with molten salts or graphite blocks, a technology I am working on with some specialized companies) to be used by night or in absence of wind to produce hot steam to turn a turbine generator, it enters in power production faster than the hydro, but a bit slower than the batteries, and depending on the size you can store energy for weeks ahead.
Another means is the submarine stream hydroelectric turbines, that are giving a steady production of high capacity for decades, energy that you can store by pumping water to use it to cover peak moments. My company Karinns Hydro Electric Turbines LTD. is looking for good places where to place turbines, from rivers to canals (small units) to submarine streams (huge units) and I presume around your places there is lots of potential.

One last thing is to hydrolyse water into gas, and store liquefied hydrogen to power Diesel generators when in need, the advantage is you use the extra power when you would have to dispose of, and can store it for decades, it will not evaporate or loose energy, but is an expensive method to start with, although some money can be recuperated in the process by selling liquefied oxygen to industry and hospitals, since you shall have this by-product anyway.

We can provide any of these solutions on demand, but the best would be a wise combination of them, that would generate stability in the grid, jobs, a lot of useful byproducts to sell, boost economy and eliminate the need of fossil and nuke energy one step at the time.

E-mail me at: popemil@libero.it and let's examine the possibilities together.

Copyrighted by Emil Pop, 2012, all rights reserved.