Green Tech

General Electric on Tuesday said that it has reached an agreement to deploy its coal gasification technology in China, a move the company says will advance underground storage of carbon dioxide.

The energy giant announced a set of agreements in a ceremony in Beijing, including deals for GE's high-speed rail and hybrid locomotive engines. The activity comes the same day that China and the U.S. announced a number of energy-related research initiatives in coal, electric vehicles, and smart-grid technologies.

GE and coal power plant operator Shenhua Group signed a memorandum of understanding to create a joint venture to build plants that use GE's coal gasification products. They projected that a definitive agreement would be done by the first half of next year.

Coal gasification, already used in dozens of facilities, is cleaner than the traditional coal-fired process used in power plants because pollutants can be removed during power generation, according to the Department of Energy. Gasification is a thermo-chemical process where coal or other carbon-based feedstocks are treated under high heat and pressure with steam so that they break down into what's called syngas, which contains hydrogen and carbon monoxide. That syngas is then burned to run an electricity turbine.

In the planned projects in China, GE and Shenhua expect to build integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) facilities in China, including a commercial-scale plant that separates out carbon dioxide for underground storage.

Because the U.S. and China rely heavily on coal for power generation, policy makers say that carbon capture and storage at coal plants is an important technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants.

The U.S. Trade Development Agency will said it will fund the "initial steps" toward a plant in China based on GE technology.

The president of GE's Power and Water business, Steve Bolze, said in a statement that additional plants with coal gasification and carbon storage are needed to scale up the industry and lower costs.

BOSTON--While hundreds of other companies are trying to make a better battery, start-up SustainX Energy Solutions is trying to find better ways to compress and store air to help utilities take full advantage of intermittent sources of energy like wind.

Dax Kepshire, president of SustainX, sketched out the company's technology and product plans here Thursday at the Fifth Annual Conference on Clean Energy. SustainX was spun out of Dartmouth College last year and received $4 million in funding from Polaris Venture Partners and Rockport Capital in August of this year. It now has 10 employees.

There are already a few compressed-air facilities in the world where off-peak electricity is used to pump air underground for storage. During peak-demand times, the air is released and pushed through a turbine to make electricity.

It's a method that's getting more attention now as a way to store several hours worth of wind power, for example.

The primary difference with SustainX's approach is that it doesn't need an underground salt dome or limestone cavern to store the compressed air. Instead, it proposes storing the compressed air in off-the-shelf tanks. Its technical goal in two years is to cram 4 megawatt-hours worth of stored energy in a 40-foot long container, said Kepshire. The tank-filled container would be able to deliver 1 megawatt of power.

In the near term, it plans to build a 100 kilowatt hour pilot system to test the efficiency and then to validate the larger model in 2011, Kepshire said.

Its technology is also very different from the existing compressed-air storage facilities. With traditional compressed-air energy storage, a machine called a compressor compacts air and pumps it underground. To make electricity, the air is released and run through special turbines and a generator to make electricity.

SustainX is designing a system that uses a hydraulic piston to compress air. When the air is released, it moves a hydraulic motor which is attached to a generator to make electricity, Kepshire explained.

The key to making the overall system is to reduce the energy loss that happens in the compression and decompression of air, he said. He expects the first pilot system to be about 50 percent efficient but the full system to be more around 70 percent efficient overall.

Compressed air energy storage has a lot of potential because it's relatively inexpensive and because utilities can store many hours worth of electricity. Pacific Gas & Electric is investigating locations for compressd-air storage capable of delivering 300 megawatts of electricity for 10 hours, or 3,000 megawatt-hours. By contrast, utility-scale battery storage systems in use now deliver 1 or 2 megawatts for a few hours.

SustainX doesn't have any customers yet, but Kepshire said the company is targeting utilities looking to use more renewable energy. The company's technology, if it proves efficient enough, can be scaled to stored many hours of energy and deliver large amounts of power, he said.

Updated on November 13 at 1:11 p.m. PT to clarify and correct technical details.

Big levitated spinning disks will provide electricity to the grid in a project set to begin next month.

Flywheel energy storage company Beacon Power on Tuesday said it plans to begin construction of a 20-megawatt storage facility in Stephentown, N.Y. Provided on a continuous basis, twenty megawatts could power thousands of homes. But flywheels are used only for providing power for short periods.

Rather have many hours of stored energy on standby, the flywheels will store and dispatch bursts of electricity for what's called frequency regulation in the utility industry. Because of fluctuations in power demand, power generators need to deliver power to the grid to maintain a steady signal frequency. Beacon Power's flywheels are designed to provide one megawatt of power for 15 minutes.

With flywheels, electrical energy is converted into mechanical energy and stored by the spinning disks. By absorbing electricity and dispatching it for quick bursts of a few minutes, utilities can maintain the frequenc with a system that uses no fossil fuel and responds quickly, according to Beacon Power.

The project will help the utility better use renewable energy that supplies electricity intermittently to the grid, according to the New York State Public Service Commission.

The installation in upstate New York will be the first large-scale use of Beacon Power's technology, according to the company. The Tyngsboro, Mass.-based company secured a Department of Energy loan guarantee in July for $43 million to partially finance the project.

Until now, Beacon Power has operated two smaller 1-megawatt facilities, where 10 flywheels are placed in a shipping container-size structure. The wheels themselves are made of carbon fiber composites, rather than metal, and spin at 16,000 revolutions per minute. To reduce friction, the mechanical components are stored in a vacuum and levitated with a permanent magnet, according to the company.

Another idea that has been pursued by Google for frequency regulation is using networks of electric-vehicle batteries. Rather than dispatch stored energy from batteries, plugged-in cars could have the charge rate throttled back, which a grid management system could use to maintain frequency.

Lithium ion batteries used as energy storage for utilities will be a $1 billion industry by 2018, according to a report released Wednesday by Pike Research called "Energy Storage Technology Markets."

Much of the lithium ion battery development has been geared toward perfecting the batteries as power sources for electronics, and in recent years, cars. But the alternative energy industry is going to benefit from that research, too. Once that happens, there will be a surge in the sales of industrial-scale lithium ion batteries for power utilities, according to Pike research.

"Utilities will be the downstream beneficiaries of innovation and investment in lithium ion batteries for the transportation sector," Pike Research analyst David Link said in a statement.

The energy storage industry in general is poised to grow as more private and public organizations embrace wind and solar energy worldwide. Because wind and solar systems provide energy in bursts and their cycles are not usually in sync with local peak energy usage hours, power storage when using wind or solar will become an obvious necessity for utilities, according to Pike Research.

Out of eleven methods of energy storage, Pike Research found that lithium ion batteries for utility use will be the fastest growing segment of the storage industry.

Sodium Sulfur (NAS) batteries and kinetic storage systems like pumped hydro and Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) were seen as the next likely leading utility energy storage solutions.

Judged by media buzz and venture capital dollars, lithium ion batteries are the name of the game in the emerging field of storage for electric vehicles and the power grid. But there is a cadre of companies pursuing ultracapacitors that can work hand in hand with batteries.

South Korea-based Neescap on Tuesday said that it has raised $9 million in bridge financing to expand production of its ultracapacitors for the transportation, power industry, and consumer electronics markets.

In the U.S., early-stage companies designing the materials and electrolytes for ultracapacitors include Graphene Energy, EnerG2, and Ioxus. Much hyped EEStor, backed by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has signed a supply deal with electric vehicle company Zenn, although its products are still not commercially available.

Compared to batteries, ultracapacitors can't store a lot of energy, so they wouldn't typically be used alone to run plug-in electric vehicles. On the other hand, ultracapacitors are "power dense," which means that they can discharge the energy they do have quickly. Conversely, they can be recharged quickly--in seconds or minutes, and with almost no degradation in performance over time, say backers.

Ultracapacitors are already used in consumer electronics such as digital cameras to help provide a burst of power for flashes, which extends overall run time, said Chad Hall, the chief operating officer of Oneonta, N.Y.-based Ioxus, on Tuesday. The technical challenge for ultracapacitor companies in the coming years is to build storage devices that can operate in high-voltage applications, he said.

Ioxus, which means "power" in Greek, was spun off from its parent company three years ago to pursue energy storage in electric transportation, renewable energy storage, and backup power. Rather than replace batteries, the company expects that its ultracapacitors, which it began manufacturing earlier this year, will complement them. "It all comes down to hybridization. We've got hybrid cars, so you need to hybridize energy storage," he said.

One of the first markets the company is pursuing is fork lifts. An ultracapacitor could be used for the jolts of power needed to lift heavy things, which would give a longer life to fork lifts' lead acid batteries, said Hall. Other promising uses include maintaining the stability of grid frequency, he said.

"Ultracapacitors enable battery technology, or fuel cells, or solar and wind. They become the bridge you need for most of those applications to go forward. It's gotten to the point technology-wise so that you can do that," he said.

Another advantage is that Ioxus ultracapacitors don't use hazardous materials. But getting the price low enough for these applications remains a barrier, he said.

Breakthroughs ahead?
Joel Schindall, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, predicts that ultracapacitors will make a jump in energy storage capacity in the years ahead.

Right now, ultracapacitors discharge 10 times faster than batteries but only store about 5 percent of the energy as comparably sized batteries, Schindall said last Wednesday at the EmTech emerging technology conference.

"It's still useful in applications when you charge and discharge frequently, such as regenerative braking, but it's not a replacement for batteries at a large scale," he said.

For the past five years, Schindall has been leading research on ways to replace activated carbon--the porous material in ultracapacitors that stores electric charge--with a "shag carpet" of carbon nanotubes on a conducting substrate. The company FastCap Systems was formed earlier this year to commercialize the technology.

Schindall projects that ultracapacitors eventually will be able to store as much as 25 percent of the energy of batteries, a jump he said would be "disruptive." Right now, nanostructures developed by MIT researchers can hold twice as much energy as activated carbon. In the coming months, his team expects to show it can hold five times the energy as activated carbon, he said.

Lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems had a rousing debut on the public stock market on Thursday, giving some good news to legions of energy investors and entrepreneurs.

The Watertown, Mass.-based company, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, saw its share prices rise over 50 percent from its offering price to close at over $20.

Through the initial public offering, the company is expected to raise over $400 million, Reuters reported. It had initially hoped to net $250 million but adjusted its offering price to raise more.

A123 Systems' IPO has been closely watched in the green tech community because it is one of only a few energy-related companies started this decade to go public. It currently supplies batteries for power tools and has built large, megawatt-scale batteries for utilities.

It's also eyeing the automotive sector, a potentially much larger market. A123 Systems received a $249.1 million grant from the Department of Energy to build a lithium ion battery packs factory in Michigan as part of a $2.4 billion investment in the plug-in electric car supply chain.

A123 Systems' IPO was the second most successful of the year, Reuters reported. A123 initially filed to go public in August of 2008.

Although it was a strong IPO, some energy storage experts say that lithium ion batteries, which will be used in a number of upcoming plug-in electric vehicles, need to come down in costs significantly for electric cars to be more mainstream.

Despite all the talk about needed breakthroughs in batteries, Pacific Gas & Electric is pursuing a less high-tech approach to store wind power: underground compressed air.

The utility on Wednesday said that it is seeking $25 million in smart-grid stimulus funds to build an underground compressed-air storage facility that would be able to deliver as much electricity as a medium-size power plant for about 10 hours.

PG&E said the project is part of its smart-grid initiative and would take about five years to develop and build but, in a company blog post, didn't offer any other details on the proposal.

With compressed-air energy storage (CAES), air is compressed and then pumped in natural underground reservoirs. The air is released later and converted into electricity.

There are currently two compressed-air energy storage facilities in operation--one in Alabama and one in Germany--but the technique has been getting more attention because it is a relatively cheap approach to storage.

Utilities are starting to use flywheels to smooth out fluctuations on the grid or truck-size batteries to provide backup power for a couple of hours for a single substation.

CAES is well-suited to an intermittent source of energy like wind because a large amount of energy can be stored for many hours. PG&E's proposal calls for storing 300 megawatts worth of power for 10 hours, while most utility storage batteries being tested are 1 or 2 megawatts for shorter periods.

PG&E said that it plans to use wind turbines to compress the air during off-peak times and then draw from the reservoir during peak times. Shifting the energy from off-peak to peak times, such as the middle of the day, makes it more valuable as utilities pay more for energy at peak times. A wind farm in Iowa has been working on CAES storage for a few years to take advantage of peak pricing for wind.

PG&E quoted a Princeton University study on CAES that concluded that "CAES appears to have many of the characteristics necessary to transform wind into a mainstay of global electricity generation."

Industry executives say that the most cost-effective utility storage is pumped hydro, where water is pumped uphill and released at peak times to make electricity.

This technique, which has been around for decades, is tough to beat on cost. But like compressed-air storage, it requires that utilities find the suitable geography.

Updated at 12:45 p.m. PT to clarify the capacity and energy storage of the facility.

So far in 2009, battery companies have received over $600 million in venture capital funding, compared with $478 million garnered for 2008, according to research analyst Lux Research.

The investment isn't without reason. In a report released Tuesday, Lux predicted that the energy storage market will grow to become a $60 billion industry by 2013.

But for now, it's hard for even the experts to predict who will emerge as the victorious innovators. Instead of a few key players, there's a plethora of both established and start-up companies developing a wide range of approaches to power storage for things like cars, utilities, and gadgets, according to Lux.

A123Systems, of which GE is an investor, and NGK Insulators are seen as leaders in power grid energy storage.

And Lux sees Johnson Controls-Saft and Compact Power as leaders in developing lithium ion batteries for electric hybrid cars.

But when it comes to batteries for products like power tools, electric bikes, and portables, the space is wide open. That space is open not only to emerging companies, but also as to which type of battery technology will succeed, according to Lux.

"Nickel-metal hydride (NiMH), nickel-zinc (NiZn) and even lithium-sulfur (Li-S) and lithium-air (Li-air) batteries are all pitching themselves as lower-cost alternatives," according to the report.

At least one company is already poised to make money off the uncertainty. Lux is offering a service to manufacturers and investors interested in the market. It's dubbed the Lux Innovation Grid, a chart that plots the variables for evaluating companies' battery tech and business models.

Electric car maker Zenn Motor has increased its investment in EEStor, a stealth company that focuses on energy storage and claims its technology will yield an affordable car-battery pack.

Toronto-based Zenn said Thursday that it has verified previously done tests of EEStor's ultracapacitor technology and that it has invested an additional $700,000 in the company.

The Zenn 'neighborhood' electric car.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

As part of its agreement with EEStor, Zenn now has an option to purchase as much as 10 percent of the company--up from 3.8 percent--if EEStor delivers "production-quality" energy-storage devices for small cars.

Zenn now makes its namesake "neighborhood" electric vehicle, which has a top speed of 25 miles per hour and a range of 30 miles to 50 miles.

With EEStor's Electrical Energy Storage Units, Zenn intends to make the CityZenn, an all-electric car that would be highway-capable and have a range of 250 miles on a full charge, according to reports. In an interview, Zenn CEO Ian Clifford said he expects EEStor to deliver a unit by year's end, which will allow Zenn to commercialize the storage in cars next year.

Zenn has a license for use of EEStor's storage units for applications under 1,400 kilograms, which can cover consumer electronics and grid storage.

"In addition to our exclusive automotive applications, our equity position in EEStor gives our shareholders a stake in the many potential mass applications EEStor can pursue, such as power in portable consumer electronics, improving the performance of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar generation, and increasing the efficiency and stability of power grids around the world," Clifford said in a statement.

Skepticism
EEStor's ultracapacitor technology is also being tested by Lockheed Martin for military applications. The company is reportedly backed by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The company claims that its ultracapacitor technology is major improvement on lithium ion batteries, able to deliver the equivalent amount of energy storage at a fraction of weight and volume of existing storage. It also claims that it storage units will not use any hazardous materials.

In April, it said that Texas Research International had verified the storage units' ability to operate in extreme temperatures.

But EEStor has numerous detractors who question whether the company, which has not publicly shown a working prototype, can deliver on its stated technical goals.