Tag Archives: grid

Rust-Based Batteries Successfully Integrate with Electric Grid for the First Time

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Rust-based battery systems housed within standard 12-meter shipping containers

Ore Energy

Iron-empty batteries that utilize a reversible rusting mechanism to store and release energy now stand as the first type linked to public power grids. Startup Ore Energy announced on July 30 that the battery developed by Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is now grid-connected.

These batteries play a crucial role in maintaining a stable power supply by storing renewable energy generated from solar and wind sources, preventing immediate decreases in electricity availability during sudden changes in weather conditions.

“We need to effectively store the surplus of energy generated when the wind blows and the sun shines,” mentions John Joseph Mary from the Faraday Institute, a UK battery research facility. “Essentially, the battery stabilizes the energy output for grid usage.”

While most grid-connected batteries are lithium iron phosphate varieties produced in China, they tend to store only 4-6 hours of electricity and are quite costly, according to Mary. Conversely, the iron-empty batteries created by Ore Energy can store over 100 hours of electricity and are made from inexpensive, readily accessible materials.

“Iron is the most abundantly mined metal globally and is extremely affordable,” says Mary. “When combined with air, which is literally everywhere around us and essentially free, they are among the cheapest materials available.”

Battery systems utilize electricity to convert iron oxide (rust) back into metal iron for energy storage. The iron can discharge energy through a chemical reaction with oxygen from the air, reverting back to rust.

“During discharge, we transform the iron into an innovative kind of rust,” explains Aytac Yilmaz, CEO of Ore Energy. “When charging, we revert the rust to iron, repeating this process continuously while the battery breathes in and out atmospheric oxygen.”

The battery is housed in standard 12-meter shipping containers and holds multiple megawatt-hours of energy. One megawatt-hour can power an average US household for over a month.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts-based Form Energy is executing several iron battery projects across the US, set to be established in New England and the Midwest.

In addition to iron and air, these batteries utilize affordable, plentiful water-based electrolytes, significantly minimizing the risk of battery fires. “I hesitate to say this, but water is undeniably non-combustible,” remarks Mary.

Ultimately, the primary objective of this battery technology is to facilitate the transition of renewable energy resources to supplant fossil fuels within the electric grid.

“Energy companies are still heavily reliant on gas-fired power generation to ensure flexibility when solar and wind cannot provide enough energy,” states Bas Kil, Business Development Manager at Ore Energy. “However, a long-term solution will necessitate various types of flexibility, where these innovative batteries can significantly contribute.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Minor Incentives Can Shield the Grid from the Electric Vehicle Surge

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Challenging charging patterns: Why night charging eases grid pressure

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Offering small financial incentives encourages many electric vehicle owners to charge their cars during off-peak hours, despite the lesser impact of motivational nudges.

This finding emerged from a practical trial illustrating how minor financial rewards can alleviate grid demand during peak times. Such flexibility will become increasingly crucial as the number of electric vehicle users escalates globally.

“Incentivizing nighttime charging led to a 50% reduction in charging periods and a substantial increase in off-peak usage,” says Blake Sheaffer from the University of Calgary, Canada.

Sheaffer and his team engaged 200 electric vehicle owners in Calgary, dividing them randomly into three groups. One group received a financial incentive of 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (roughly $10 monthly). The second group was given informational nudges about the societal benefits of off-peak charging, while the third group served as a control, tracking standard charging behaviors without intervention.

Surprisingly, the nudging strategy proved “entirely ineffective,” according to Shaffer. “Simply encouraging them to act out of goodwill didn’t yield significant results.” However, he posits that more frequent reminders than the initial one might have improved outcomes.

In contrast, the financial incentives brought a marked change in charging timings but only while recipients were receiving the money; once the incentives ceased, many reverted to their previous habits.

“The study compellingly demonstrates how small financial rewards can influence electric vehicle charging behavior,” notes Kenneth Gillingham from Yale University. Such rewards might have felt like “easy money” since nighttime charging was largely convenient.

This is particularly significant, as “many energy grids require substantial upgrades,” warns Andrea La Nause from Deakin University in Australia. She points out that her study highlights how financial incentives can lead Australian electric vehicle owners to charge during the day when solar energy inflows peak.

Meanwhile, utility companies like Con Edison and Orange & Rockland in New York have already initiated similar incentive programs to promote off-peak charging.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Some skeptics warn that EVs will strain the power grid, but they could actually help to solve the problem

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Electric cars scares some people of the dark: their batteries produce much less carbon dioxide but require more power to run, prompting ominous warnings that Britain and other wealthy countries could plunge their citizens into darkness if they ban new petrol and diesel sales.

In recent months, UK net-zero skeptic newspapers have warned that a shift to EVs “risks overwhelming the grid and causing catastrophic blackouts” if intermittent solar and wind don't provide the needed power. Another article argued that “we don't need an enemy force to plunge us all into darkness – just some electricity customers doing their normal thing on a normal winter's night.”

But many who work in the electric vehicle industry believe these fears may be unfounded, arguing that the transition to electric vehicles is an exciting, potentially lucrative opportunity to build a smarter, greener energy system.


In the UK, polluting coal-fired power plants have been largely replaced by wind farms and solar panels. These renewable energies do not emit carbon dioxide, but they suffer from intermittency problems and cannot provide enough power on cloudy days or at night when there is no wind. Add in the prospect that all new cars will be electric by 2035 and it is not an exaggerated question how the power grid will keep supply and demand in balance.

Shifting demand

The transition to electric vehicles will undoubtedly require more electricity generation as electric vehicles, rather than land-based fossil fuels, become the primary source of energy for transportation, but smart technology can be used to shift demand away from peak times, such as 5pm in winter, when demand for electricity risks outstripping supply.

This isn't just a pipe dream: home charger company MyEnergy calculates that if balancing services were enabled across all installed compatible chargers, it could “provide over 1GW of demand-shifting flexibility to the grid, more than 98% of the UK's major fossil fuel power stations.”

Octopus Energy, which has quickly grown to become the UK's largest electricity supplier, says its Go electricity tariff manages the charging of the batteries of 150,000 electric vehicles. Charging them all at once would require 1GW of power, but smart chargers hold off charging until off-peak hours at night, shifting demand away from peaks. Electricity is also cheaper during off-peak hours, with clear benefits for consumers: Octopus says its customers save an average of about £600 a year.




In the UK, polluting coal-fired power stations have largely been replaced by wind farms and solar panels, which suffer from “intermittency issues”. Photo: Martin Meissner/AP

One gigawatt is the equivalent of a medium-sized power station, enough to power 600,000 homes. Electric vehicles on UK roads are already on the rise in the UK. Peak electricity demand in winter is 61.1GWAccording to the National Grid, delaying charging for just a few hours can help reduce energy consumption.

Jack Fielder, chief strategy officer at MyEnergy, said: “If every EV charger could provide a grid balancing service and every driver took part in a grid balancing program, we could collectively eliminate periods of strain on the grid.”

It could also be useful when power supply exceeds demand, such as on warm, windy nights, said Chris Pateman-Jones, chief executive of charging company Connected Curve.

“Instead of wasting renewable energy, I see EVs as a giant sponge,” he says. For consumers, there will be little change: Connected Curve data shows that most cars are already charged by midnight, leaving them idle for hours before they're needed.

Powered by car battery

It's not just the timing of when electrons flow into car batteries that will help the National Grid Electricity Supply Operator (NGESO), the company responsible for balancing the U.K. power grid: It calls demand shifting a “low-regret action that will help reduce the impact on peak demand and reduce renewable curtailment,” but it also wants electrons to flow in the other direction.

Vehicle-to-grid technology is an attractive prospect: instead of building power plants, hydroelectric storage, or stationary battery fleets, the idea is to harness the energy stored in car batteries. Cars could become portable power packs, providing backup for homes in the event of a blackout, and even allowing drivers to earn money by selling power back to the grid.

NGESO is Annual estimate It predicts what the UK electricity system will look like in 2035 and 2050. It sees a growing role for cars feeding power back into the grid, and in the most optimistic scenario, capacity could reach 39GW (equivalent to one-tenth of the vastly expanded generating capacity).

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Source: www.theguardian.com

Protecting the entire power grid from outages by rainproofing 1% of power lines

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Damage from storms like Hurricane Harvey caused severe power outages to the Texas power grid.

Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images

Simulations suggest that storm sheltering just 1% of the power lines in a power grid can reduce the likelihood of a hurricane-induced power outage by a factor of five to one in 20. The demonstration, conducted on a mock version of the Texas power grid, could help improve the resiliency of power transmission systems around the world.

“The importance of different power lines to the overall system becomes clear only when studying the partial disruption of the power grid as the storm progresses,” he says. frank hellman at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.

To identify the critical power lines most in need of protection, Hellman and his colleagues investigated how the power grid responds to widespread damage over time. They focused on the large-scale “failure cascade” that occurs after the initial storm damage. When power plants and transmission lines shut down to protect against further damage, secondary power outages can occur and increase the impact of a hurricane.

Researchers have determined that wind-related storm damage, such as damaged pylons and fallen tree limbs from gusts, and resulting damage to Texas during seven historic hurricanes between 2003 and 2020. simulated both a series of power outages that occurred on the power grid.

Rather than trying to predict individual power line failures, which can be caused by fallen trees or lightning strikes, researchers set each power line's probability of failure based on local wind speeds during each storm event. assigned. Their model maintains the same 20 critical transmission lines, where initial storm damage can cause a series of secondary line failures, even if they randomly vary the probability of failure for each line and rerun the simulation. Consistently identified electrical wires.

This experiment synthetic network model of the Texas Grid, which was previously developed by a team at Texas A&M University. It is not an exact replica of the actual physical grid, but represents the overall behavior of the grid. “None of the power lines in that grid are real power lines,” he says. adam burchfield at Texas A&M University. “Therefore, to see if these results hold true for the real Texas grid, we need to perform the study on at least a model of the real Texas grid.”

Power grid operators themselves can run this simulation with their own detailed power grid models, although independent researchers typically do not have access to such models for security reasons. Once you identify which specific lines are weak points, you can weatherize critical components of your grid.

Beyond Texas, such simulations can also model grids in other locations where similar storms have occurred. It says it “may provide an opportunity to validate the model and results.” Chuan Yi Ji from Georgia Tech in Atlanta was not involved in the study.

Hellman acknowledges that wind damage models have limitations. It does not take into account the possibility of further damage from flooding or how precautions grid operators can take to prevent power outages.

Still, Burchfield said the study's use of “different scenarios” to check the probability of outages in a realistic grid model further emphasized the study's main findings. “I think grid strengthening is a key element in making the grid more resilient,” he says. “And this paper shows that strategically choosing which transmission lines to strengthen is important to have the greatest impact on resiliency.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com