Multi Day Energy Storage from Minnesota to Maine – This is Not Cool (thinc.blog)
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, currently campaigning as Vice Presidential candidate with Kamala Harris, has developed a good record in his state on clean energy. A new project in Northwest Minnesota is an example.
New York Times:
The past and the future of electricity in America are perhaps most visible in a Minnesota town surrounded by potato farms and cornfields.
Towering over Becker, a community of a little more than 5,000 people northwest of Minneapolis, is one of the nation’s largest coal power plants. It is being replaced — to the dismay of some residents — with thousands of acres of solar panels and a test of long-duration batteries.
Becker is one of the first of a group of seven Minnesota municipal areas, called the Coalition of Utility Cities, making the change from a fossil-fuel-based economy to clean energy.
Minnesota is among the states that can benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act by using it as a tool to replace coal plants with sources like solar farms. Through the law, Sherco’s owner, Xcel Energy, received tax credits that reduced the cost of the solar project for the utility’s ratepayers.
Becker is also one of two sites where Xcel is installing demonstration battery systems from Form Energy, a Massachusetts company. The systems — using readily available materials like water, air and iron — can store solar and wind-generated energy as a backup, with a capacity to power 2,000 homes for up to five days.
“This site is an incredibly valuable epicenter of the Upper Midwest,” Bob Frenzel, chairman and chief executive of Xcel Energy, said during a tour of the plant. “When you think about the geography of the grid, it’s incredibly valuable to maintain as an energy center.”
Energy Storage News:
Work has begun on the first pilot project using Form Energy’s iron-air battery, designed to cost-effectively store and discharge energy over multiple days.
The much-talked-about US startup’s proprietary technology is based on the oxidisation (rusting) of iron. Its first-ever project is being built with electricity supplier Great River Energy in Cambridge, Minnesota.
The two companies said last week (15 August) that groundbreaking has taken place on the Cambridge Energy Storage Project, set to go into operation in late 2025.
Great River Energy, a non-profit cooperative, will evaluate the iron-air battery system’s operation over ‘several years’—the exact length of the assessment was not specified in last week’s announcement.
While it has since been joined by a number of other pilot deployments announced by Form Energy, the Minnesota project was the first the tech company revealed back in mid-2020 as it emerged from stealth mode and before it even disclosed the battery chemistry a few months later.
Wall Street Journal:
A four-year-old startup says it has built an inexpensive battery that can discharge power for days using one of the most common elements on Earth: iron.
Form Energy Inc.’s batteries are far too heavy for electric cars. But it says they will be capable of solving one of the most elusive problems facing renewable energy: cheaply storing large amounts of electricity to power grids when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing.
The work of the Somerville, Mass., company has long been shrouded in secrecy and nondisclosure agreements. It recently shared its progress with The Wall Street Journal, saying it wants to make regulators and utilities aware that if all continues to go according to plan, its iron-air batteries will be capable of affordable, long-duration power storage by 2025.
Its backers include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate investment fund whose investors include Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos. Form recently initiated a $200 million funding round, led by a strategic investment from steelmaking giant ArcelorMittal SA, MT 2.47%increase; green up pointing triangleone of the world’s leading iron-ore producers.
Form is preparing to soon be in production of the “kind of battery you need to fully retire thermal assets like coal and natural gas” power plants, said the company’s chief executive, Mateo Jaramillo, who developed Tesla Inc.’s Powerwall battery and worked on some of its earliest automotive powertrains.
Canary Media:
New England states are attempting to make good on their climate pledges while addressing some very real concerns about the long-term stability of the region’s electrical grid. The Department of Energy awarded $389 million in grant funding last week to strengthen that system. Much of that money will support terminals to collect power from massive new offshore wind farms and distribute it across the region. But $147 million from the tranche, which was earmarked in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will go toward an enormous, unconventional battery project intended to help one of the most congested parts of the New England grid.
The startup Form Energy plans to install its novel iron-air batteries at the site of a former paper and pulp mill in Lincoln, Maine, which sits off I-95 between Bangor and Mount Katahdin. The project would be able to inject 85 megawatts of power onto the grid, and maintain that level of discharge for up to 100 hours. Instead of burning fossil fuels for on-demand power, these batteries store energy from the grid at times of abundance, like when the offshore wind farms are cranking.
“The New England grid is moving quickly to address its vulnerabilities from a reliability standpoint and its ability to bring on additional low-cost renewables,” Form co-founder and CEO Mateo Jaramillo told Canary Media. ?“Having multiday-duration storage gives them more levers to solve that complex challenge they have for their grid.” |
