White House Leads Major Energy Storage Push

Megalith

Megalith

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The administration made a couple of commitments this week to accelerate the grid integration of renewable energy and storage. The plans are expected to result in at least 1.3 GW of additional energy storage procurement or deployment in the next five years, as well as approximately $1 billion in energy storage investments.

The White House says that renewable energy generation has increased at a record pace since 2009, and energy storage and other technologies have the potential to further accelerate the development of a cleaner and smarter grid. In 2015 alone, the U.S. doubled the installed capacity of advanced energy storage to 500 MW, and deployment of this key resource is projected to continue to expand, the fact sheet adds. Through new executive actions, the federal government has committed to increasing its storage and microgrid capacity through programs that will make federal and military bases more resilient and provide funding for microgrids in rural communities.
 
Wouldn't it help if they first understand that they are using the wrong units? Isn't stored energy measured in KWhrs? KW is an instantaneous measurement.
 
I think it's a cool initiative. Honestly I think that funding is kind of low for something that could have a wide ranging impact. We spent almost $1 billion dollars in the "War On Ebola" and only 1 person has ever died from that in America....so something that could improve 100's of thousands of lives should get some loving.

I'm all for the government funding advanced technology development. As long as it provides the stream lined approach it advertises.
 
Damn and here I thought it was a push to explore newer technologies for energy storage, but it seems like they just are going to be buying a bunch of existing batteries probably making someone really rich.
 
tgom222 said:
Wouldn't it help if they first understand that they are using the wrong units? Isn't stored energy measured in KWhrs? KW is an instantaneous measurement.
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I followed a link in the article to ESA's press release. On their website, they have a glossary. There, they state:

MegaWatt-hour
Acronym(s): MWh
A measure involving one million watts being generated, transmitted, distributed or used continuously for one hour. The MegaWatt-hour a common unit of electric energy. (Note the difference between MegaWatt-hours of energy and a Megawatt of power where power reflects the rate at which electric energy is generated, transmitted, distributed or used)

The article does mostly talk about MW or GW of storage, but at one point it does refer to "a new 7 MW solar PV system with a 6 MW (18 MWh) battery system". The article could certainly explain how they are reporting the units better. Perhaps it's an issue of industry jargon not being translated well.
 
Of course, it doesn't have to be batteries. It could be, huge capacitors, moving water up and downstream using pumps and generators or air compressors filling huge tanks underground or whatever. But, yeah they're going to buy a mess of batteries, almost certainly.
 
I just hope the country's oil reserves were propped up during the period of ultra-low crude prices. If not, thanks Obama.
 
pothb said:
oooOOOOO Solyndra 2.0?
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You know the government made a profit on those renewable energy investments, right? Solyndra failed when the Chinese flooded the market with cheap competition to their particular design. The Obama administration invested in a bunch of companies knowing that some of them probably weren't going to make it depending on the market response. The program was successful and it won back a substantial portion of renewable energy equipment manufacturing from China.

But hurr hurr Obama dumb hurr hurr...
 
DeathFromBelow said:
You know the government made a profit on those renewable energy investments, right? Solyndra failed when the Chinese flooded the market with cheap competition to their particular design. The Obama administration invested in a bunch of companies knowing that some of them probably weren't going to make it depending on the market response. The program was successful and it won back a substantial portion of renewable energy equipment manufacturing from China.

But hurr hurr Obama dumb hurr hurr...
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Source?

Everything I've heard of Solyndra is basically a company getting money then "something" happened and it closed up shop.
 
pothb said:
Source?

Everything I've heard of Solyndra is basically a company getting money then "something" happened and it closed up shop.
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The government never knows what the world needs, only what some people with political funding need, and so that is where the money goes, into someones company to line their pockets and for it to fail a few years later.

You are 100% right that Solyndra went under, the US government actually tried to get money back from these loans by.....Suing some Chinese manufactures of solar panels because they were selling to cheap here in the US for Solyndra to be competitive. Government thinking right there.
 
Even if the government did manage to win back money from the China, which I'd still like some source since stories like these usually end with trials and questioning starting.

That is hardly successful, as the person above said. But you know, I'm all hurr durr obama, apparently. That's what everyone seem to like to say when anyone question or insult the obama administration.
 
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