Masdar, a renewable energy investor and also the name of the zero-energy town outside of Abu Dhabi is buying a Greek renewable energy company Terna Energy for the equivalent of 3.2 Billion Euros, equal to about 67% of the company’s outstanding shares at completion of the transaction. Masdar plans to launch an all-cash mandatory tender offer to acquire all the remaining outstanding shares of the company with the intention of reaching 100%.

It is the largest ever energy transaction on the Athens Stock Exchange, and one of the largest in the European renewables market.

The deal is expected to provide significant capital investment in Greece and other European countries, supporting Terna’s contribution to Greece’s National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) and the EU’s net zero by 2050 target. The proposed acquisition demonstrates the scale and ambition of Masdar’s growth plans in the region, and further solidifies Masdar’s role as a trusted global energy transition partner to governments, investors, developers and communities across the globe.

“We are injecting capital and global expertise to accelerate Terna Energy’s expansion, supporting Greece’s renewable energy ambitions and extending Masdar’s global reach.

“We look forward to completing the transaction and starting to work with Terna Energy’s leadership team to supercharge their ambitious growth plans in support of Greece’s energy transition,” says Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, Chief Executive Officer of Masdar.

Established in 1997, Terna is a leading European clean energy platform, with a track record of more than 25 years of delivering innovative and sustainable projects. The company specializes in financing, developing, constructing and operating renewable energy facilities, focused on wind, solar, hydroelectric and pumped storage projects.

The company has recently announced its growth plan targeting renewable energy operational capacity of 6GW by 2030. With a strong portfolio of projects in Greece and Europe, Terna is the largest investor in the renewables energy sector in Greece.

Masdar has retained Rothschild & Co. as sole financial advisor, and Simmons & Simmons, Bernitsas Law, Latham & Watkins as legal advisors, in connection with the transaction and financing.

Terna Energy is a Greek renewable energy company that is listed on the Athens Exchange. The company is a subsidiary of Greek conglomerate GEK Terna, which through its subsidiary Heron SA is as well involved in the construction and operation of thermoelectric power generation fuelled with natural gas.

The post Masdar buys Greek renewable energy co. Terna for 3.2 Billion Euros appeared first on Green Prophet.

As many already know, renewable energy is the future of electricity generation. Solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen, and hydropower are necessary sources of renewable energy our planet needs in order to slow the effects of climate. Obtaining energy via renewables is the best alternative to energy generation because it does not release greenhouse gas emissions.

However, renewable energy does not get stored on its own. For example, when solar panels absorb sunlight and generate electrical charges, the electricity generated does not stay there forever if it does not get used. For this reason, I will share with you a company that has designed a solution to this problem.

Meet H2 Energy Now. Founded by Sonya Davidson in 2011 and based in Beersheba, Israel, H2 Energy Now has developed technology that makes renewable energy more usable by storing it so that none of it goes to waste. Sonya was inspired to start the company by her fascination with water, and she learned from her mother the principles of water and took it into her career.

She knew from her high school science project that energy storage was key to solving future energy problems which we are faced with today. Now, with 15 years in Israel, Sonya’s company is excelling in the renewable energy industry.

H2 Energy Now creates green hydrogen that is efficient and costs less. Much of the energy that is produced from wind and solar energy is not being used, therefore goes to waste. For this reason, H2 Energy Now has generated a prototype that allows them to store the energy in the form of hydrogen.

When energy is needed, the hydrogen is then able to be converted into usable forms of energy. By using electromagnetic waves, the hydrogen energy storage system separates water that is able to generate electricity. The good thing about this is a small amount of water can generate a large amount of hydrogen, and the water can come from both salt and fresh water. This technology is better for their customers because the power is always available for use and it’s grid stable. In addition, it is more cost-effective as it cuts their payback on the investment in half.

Tests have shown that H2 Energy Now is 88% efficient for 60% electrolysis and that the capital expenditures are half of electrolysis. They have reached the proof of principle prototype stage and have patents granted in the US and in Europe. In addition, they have patents in France, Germany, and Great Britain. They were also selected as the winner by Corporate Live Winner in 2023 and by NASA as a top 10 energy company. They are currently working to commercialize their prototype and have completed two six-month high-tech accelerators.

This company wants to change the world, and they are already on their way to do just that. They are currently  fundraising and are self-funded up until now.

“Who is wise? The answer is those willing to learn from everyone,” Sonya quoted from a philosophy of the Jewsh fathers. Sonya said that her and H2 Energy Now are inspired by this quote and this is what they look at in order to learn, educate and move forward in this innovation towards a green sustainable future.

#energystorage, #green, #innovation, #renewableenergy, #sustainability

The post H2 Energy Now for hydrogen storage appeared first on Green Prophet.

While we contemplate whether GMO engineers can free our world from its glaring lack of light emitting houseplants and radiant pigs, we overlook far more amazing secrets of nature which make our best bio-science minds look like rank amateurs. The humble rhubarb plant is one such example.

Harvard scientists recently discovered a secret lurking beneath the oversize leaves of this bittersweet plant. This secret may lead to more widespread and efficient use of solar energy.

Bionic Rhubarb

The Six-Million Dollar man, the Bionic Woman and Robocop redefined the word bionic to mean a biological/robotics crossbreed. But long before the advent of bad 1970s television shows and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, the word bionic referred to a technique of learning from nature.

Bionics meant the study of nature and the application of what we learn to meet our needs. So, for example, people studied the nanoscale engineering which gives lotus leaves their self-cleaning properties. From this they developed replicas of this design. Velcro is another example. Swiss engineer George de Mestral noticed how tenaciously the seeds of wild burdock stuck to his clothes and his dog’s fur. He studied the burrs and applied their shape to his invention. So what can we learn from rhubarb?

Amazing Rhubarb
Rhubarb is an amazing plant. Some varieties such as the desert rhubarb (Rheum palaestinum) are able to irrigate themselves.

Their enormous 1/3 square meter leaves collecting more than four liters of water each year, sixteen times what similar-sized plants can collect in their Negev desert environment where as little as 75mm of rain falls each year. These amazing plants literally water themselves!!!

Other rhubarb varieties such as Rheum rhabarbarum, are able to survive long cold dark winters in northern climates. They begin producing sugar in early spring thanks to the photosynthesis generated in its enormous dark-green leaves. The thick pinkish-red stems of this large-leafed plant are used in European and American cakes and pies.

You won’t find corned-beef and cabbage served in authentic Irish homes during Saint Patrick’s day holiday but the powerful smell of rhubarb and mackerel is likely to waft from many Irish kitchens before, during and after this upcoming holiday.

Rhubarb’s Energy Secret
But now scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have extended the use of rhubarb beyond cakes and pies and smelly fish meals. They discovered ways in which rhubarb an used in solar energy generation.

Just imagine giant rhubarb leaves adorning our electric cars and solar homes. Imagine that at night they are illuminated by the glare of genetically modified flying pigs!

Actually, that isn’t how rhubarb can be used. The Harvard team including Michael J. Aziz, Tracy Sykes, Roy G. Gordon, Thomas Dudley Cabot and Alán Aspuru-Guzik was searching for better and cheaper chemicals to use in flow batteries.

What is a Flow battery?
The batteries used in portable electronics and cars typically use a liquid or semi-liquid (so-called “dry” cell) electrolyte separating two dissimilar metal electrodes. The electrochemical reaction between the metals can cause an ion flow within the electrolyte which is balanced by an electrical current flow outside of the battery.

Typically the electrolyte isn’t used up as the battery discharges but one or both of the electrodes are chemically changed until the battery no longer works. If you want a high capacity solid electrode battery, say for a photovoltaic utility, your only choice is to make it big and when it’s dead you have to figure out how to dispose of the thousands of tons of corroded electrode.

Flow battery capacity is limited only by the size of the tank holding the flowing electrode liquid. Flow batteries seem the perfect fit for the utility-sized batteries necessary to make photovoltaic solar energy a 24/7 energy choice. The problem is that the best existing flow batteries used vanadium, an exotic metal which costs almost $3000/kg.

The flow battery chemical the Harvard team discovered is an organic (carbon-containing) molecule known as a quinone which is very similar to the quinones found in rhubarb which by comparison to vandium, can be grown or purchased for well under $3000/kg.

It might not be as exciting as illuminated flying pigs but as someone much wiser than me once said, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need.

Photo of Iranian man with Rhubarb by Masoud Soleymani Sepehr via Wikipedia

The post The best reason for growing rhubarb that we’ve ever heard appeared first on Green Prophet.

Consider first of all the particular the low availability and high cost of lithium, coupled with the environmental impact of extracting and disposing of this highly reactive ion.

There has been growing focus on sodium-ion batteries (NIBs), in particular as an energy storage solution for larger applications, such as electric vehicles and for stationary storage for renewable energies.

NIBs are attractive due to their lower cost and larger abundance of sodium (Na). Still, one of the main obstacles to the commercialization of NIBs is the limited choice of anode materials that can provide high capacity, good stability and high-rate performance to the battery.

Now Yissum, the commercial arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, introduces a novel anode for NIBs, which enables the production of a battery with high capacity, excellent rate capability and good cycle performance. The new anode, which was invented by Professor Ovadia Lev together with colleagues from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and The Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, is based on coating graphene with antimony sulphide (stibnite) nanoparticles.

The findings have been recently published in the prestigious publication Nature Communications.

The novel anode is based on a new coating technology, also invented by Prof. Lev together with Petr Prikhodchenko, which enables coating of graphenes with a thin film of nanoparticles at low cost. Prof. Lev and Denis Y.W. Yu, along with Sudip K Batabyal from the Energy Research Institute @ Nanyang Technological University (ERI@N) and their teams optimized and tested the battery’s performance. Tests conducted at NTU showed that the novel composite material performs extremely well as an anode for the new sodium-ion batteries.

The material provides more than two times the capacity of hard carbon, retains its charge capacity even at high current rates, and exhibits a charge and discharge time of 10 minutes. This would allow fast charging of NIBs in the future, which will enable utilization in applications such as electric vehicles. In addition to the excellent rate capability, the material also shows stable cycle performance, with capacity retention of more than 95% after 50 cycles.

“The battery market in the US alone is estimated at $14 billion, and is projected to grow to $17 billion by 2017. The novel anode will no doubt help propel the integration of NIBs into this market, and Yissum is now looking for potential partners for further development and commercialization of this invention,” said Yaacov Michlin, CEO of Yissum.

Image of green energy from Shutterstock

The post Pushing on for the sodium ion battery, in Nature appeared first on Green Prophet.

One long-standing problem with energy grids is that there are hourly, daily and seasonal variations in electrical demand. For example, electrical demand can double over the course of an August day in Jordan and the average daily load can vary by more than 25% between March and August.

The generation output of promising alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric and tidal power also fluctuates. Matching this variable supply with variable demand is a huge challenge for electricity producers.

The ability to shift grid capacity across long distances can help somewhat, but what we really need is a technology for efficiently storing excess electricity during times of oversupply and releasing it during times of high demand.

Pumped storage is one possible storage solution, water is pumped uphill to a reservoir during times of excess and released past hydroelectric generators during times of high demand. But this technology requires large amounts of water and a well-placed hill or mountain.

Chemical batteries are another possible grid storage solution. These are large scale versions of lead-acid car batteries, AA nickel-metal hydride batteries or the lithium batteries in laptops and iPhones. A typical iPhone battery stores about 5 Watt/hours of electricity, so Enstorage’s first Hbr battery deployment has approximately the same capacity as 20,000 iPhone batteries or 30,000 AA batteries.

One advantage of Enstorage’s hydrogen bromine flow battery is that the chemicals used are abundant and therefore relatively inexpensive.

Hydrogen can be extracted water and bromine is component of Dead Sea salt. Jordan and Israel already harvest bromine from Dead Sea salt evaporation pools. Bromine currently costs a little more than $5000 per ton. A second advantage is Enstorage’s proprietary conversion stack technology which can provide up to three times the energy density of existing grid storage batteries.

A third advantage of Enstorage’s Hydrogen Bromine flow battery has to do with the concept of a “flow battery.” Unlike ordinary household batteries, the liquid electrodes of flow batteries can be stored and external tanks and produce energy as they flow through the battery. This means the capacity can be increased simply by increasing the size of the storage tanks.

::Enstorage

The post Enstorage Pioneers 50kW Hydrogen Bromine Storage in Israel appeared first on Green Prophet.

Penicillin, Teflon, microwave ovens and superglue were all discovered by accident. And now graphene super-capacitors might be the most important accidental discovery of our time – one that can change the way energy is stored. A team of UCLA researchers led by chemist Richard Kaner used a commercial DVD burner to produce sheets of a carbon-based material known as graphene.

The “accident” occured when Cairo University graduate Maher El-Kady (pictured below) wired a small piece of graphene to an LED and found that it behaved as a super-capacitor, able to store a considerable amount of electricity. Their laser-scribed graphene is ideal as a super capacitor partially because of its enormous surface area, 1520 square meters per gram. Here’s how it works:

The story begins with quirky old kite-flying American, a key and a bolt of lightning. It ends with a jar full of electricity. Benjamin Franklin’s jar of electricity is known as a Leyden jar.

It is a primitive electronic circuit element known as a capacitor. The Leyden jar illustrates some promising characteristics of capacitors. As electrical storage devices, they are extraordinarily simple. You can make one at home with a glass jar and a some aluminum foil.

Capacitors have some advantages over Lithium, Nickle-Metal hydride and other chemical batteries. Batteries convert electrical energy to and from chemical energy. But capacitors store electrical charge by bottling excess electrons on one side of a thin barrier.

So capacitors needn’t contain caustic mixtures of acids, alkalis and toxic metals as batteries do. Capacitors can also be charged many times and they can be charged very fast. Some of the tantalum and electrolytic capacitors inside your computer or iPad are charging and discharging millions of times while you read this.

If capacitors are so wonderful, why aren’t they used in place of batteries electric cars to laptops and mobile phones?

The problem is that capacitors aren’t able to store very much energy. A Lithium Ion battery the size of a Leyden jar can store more than 500,000 times more energy.

But capacitors have improved since the Leyden jar. The graphene capacitor these UCLA scientists created has 4 billion times the capacitence of a Leyden jar.

Since its operating voltage is much lower, it might only store about 40,000 times the energy density of a Leyden jar, but this brings it much closer to the energy density of a chemical battery.

And that could change everything.

A film explaining the story of this invention is a finalist in the General Electric focus forward filmmaker competition.

Watch the film and decide for yourself whether a small, efficient, biodegradable energy storage device might revolutionize the future of energy storage.

Image of graphene supercapacitor from the UCLA newsroom

The post Energy Storage Super Capacitors Bottle Energy in New Breakthrough appeared first on Green Prophet.

Scientists at Technion, Israel’s institute of technology recently found a new way to store solar energy. Their method utilizes a substance that some of us are all too familiar with, iron oxide– otherwise known as rust. This research entitled Resonant light trapping in ultrathin films for water was published in the November 11, 2012 issue of Nature Materials and may help solve the problem of solar energy storage by enabling a more efficient and direct conversion between solar energy and hydrogen.

I grew up in a region that was once known as the rust belt. Iron foundries, heavy industry and heavy cars were plentiful in the upper Midwestern US. Winters were icy so governments used salt to help make the roads safer. Unfortunately this also made automobiles rustier.

Comedian Dave Barry once joked that American cars were made out of compressed rust. Salt-encrusted lumps of grey slush clung to the bottoms of cars and performed the alchemy of converting iron and gleaming steel into crumbling heaps of orange-red rust.

Actually it wasn’t alchemy, it was ordinary chemistry which is a little too complicated to explain here, but parts of the reaction can be simplified to something like this:

2Fe(s) + 2H2O(l) + O2(g) → 2Fe2+(aq) + 4OH-(aq)  {a bit more magic} → Fe2O3 .nH2O

Iron, water and oxygen combine to make a solution which dries to become rust.

All about rust

Rust crumbles in your hand and stains your skin, your clothes and concrete structures.

Grocery stores once sold a chemical which was supposed to remove rust stains but it was also powerful enough to eat through metal, skin and glass. Since then using a rust remover has become much less dangerous while still removing rust.

A form of rust was used in audio cassette tapes, 8-tracks, floppy disks and the hard drive which is storing this article. In 1976 NASA’s Viking lander arrived on Mars and found– rust.

The 1976 Buick I drove to prom had lost the bottom half of its passenger doors to rust. I once connected a voltmeter to some bolts straddling the rusted-out floor of my father’s car and found that the electrochemical process which gradually turned his 1969 AMC Rambler into a heap of rust also generated about 1/2 volt of electricity. I never patented this corrosion-powered “battery car” as a form of planned-obsolescence Detroit would have loved but I’m beginning to wish I’d saved some of that rust. Will it soon become as valuable as platinum was during the cold fusion fiasco? Might the rust belt prosper from this abundant resource just as Saudi Arabia did from oil and the Canadian Yukon did from gold?

Maybe not. Photovoltaic cells are made out of silicon which is found in desert sand but the price of sand hasn’t gone up very much even as the photovoltaic market grows. It turns out that just as it is for photovoltaic silicon, carbon nanotubes, diamonds and coal; the secret is not in the ingredients it is in the preparation. The Technion researchers discovered how to turn something ordinary into something useful by applying materials science.

The paper’s abstract offers a clue:

Semiconductor photoelectrodes for solar hydrogen production by water photoelectrolysis must employ stable, non-toxic, abundant and inexpensive visible-light absorbers. Iron oxide (α-Fe₂O₃) is one of few materials meeting these requirements, but its poor transport properties present challenges for efficient charge-carrier generation, separation, collection and injection. Here we show that these challenges can be addressed by means of resonant light trapping in ultrathin films designed as optical cavities.

Interference between forward- and backward-propagating waves enhances the light absorption in quarter-wave or, in some cases, deeper subwavelength films, amplifying the intensity close to the surface wherein photogenerated minority charge carriers (holes) can reach the surface and oxidize water before recombination takes place.

The researchers are making use of rust’s light absorbing properties which make those stains so visible on a T-shirt. They’re making use of its stability. Water and oxygen can turn a car into rust, but even a large dose of rust remover won’t turn that rust back into a car. They’re also making use of thin-film optical interference. Look at a pair of anti-reflection eyeglasses, the lens of a camera or binoculars, a soap bubble or a thin oil slick floating on a puddle and you’ll see one of the effects these scientists were taking advantage of.

When light comes across a thin semi-transparent film, some of the light is reflected off the bottom of the film, some is reflected off the top. If the film is just the right thickness, light of a certain wavelength can be made to constructively interfere with its reflection, making that color brighter or destructively interfere making that color dimmer.

In this case the scientists have found a way to enhance the light intensity exactly where it is needed to help separate the water’s hydrogen from its oxygen. The hydrogen can then be stored and used to generate energy when the sun isn’t shining. It’s a pretty neat trick for a lump of rust. Kudos to Hen Dotan, Ofer Kfir, Elad Sharlin, Oshri Blank, Moran Gross, Irina Dumchin, Guy Ankonina and Avner Rothschild for their research.

Photo of rusty shipwreck via Shutterstock
Image of thin film light absorption from  Resonant light trapping in ultrathin films for water in the November 11, 2012 issue of Nature Materials

The post Storing Solar Energy in Rust, From Israel appeared first on Green Prophet.

Scientists at the University of South Carolina (USC) have devised a way to turn the material in a cotton T-shirt into a source of electrical power. They envision a future where electronics are part of our wardrobe.

A few years back, my daughter haunted me for a hoodie with built-in ear buds, a novelty garment that allowed her to look stylin’ and also stay connected to her ubiquitous digital music device.  USC Professor Xiaodong Li, the tee-shirt project mastermind, takes tech fashion to new heights, anticipating an emerging need for flexible energy storage: new methods of juicing our technical tools in remote locations, off the grid, and on the go.

Modified fabric in tee shirts can store electrical charges.

Li and his associate Lihong Bao described how they converted a simple cotton tee-shirt into an electrical power source, in a recent report in the journal Advance Materials. The team soaked a conventional shirt in a flouride solution. They dried it, then baked it at super-high temperature in an oxygen-free oven to prevent the material from burning.

The altered material remained flexible; it could be draped and folded. Inspecting the cooked cloth via infrared spectroscopy, they found the resulting fabric fibers had been converted from cellulose to activated carbon, a natural repository for electricity.

Li and Bao then painted the individual fibers of the cloth with a nanometer-thick coat of manganese oxide, stepping up the fabric’s energy storage capability.

The researchers discovered that small swatches of the flexible material, which they named carbon textile, acts as a capacitor. Capacitors perform like tiny storage batteries that charge and discharge rapidly.  They can be made from many different materials, and virtually every electrical and electronic system uses them.

Tests proved their hybrid supercapacitors were stable and resilient: after thousands of charge-discharge cycles, performance never decreased more than 5% below initial capacity. Their carbon textile boasts a particularly high energy storage density. “By stacking these supercapacitors up, we should be able to charge portable electronic devices such as cell phones,” Li said.

Maybe our clothes will become self-sufficient: power our irons and washers? 

Li told the BBC,”One day our cotton T-shirts could have more functions; for example, a flexible energy storage device that could charge your cell phone or your iPad. We will soon see roll-up cell phones and laptop computers on the market,” he said, “but a flexible energy storage device is needed to make this possible.”

Li is particularly pleased to have improved on the means by which activated carbon fibers are usually obtained. “Previous methods used oil or environmentally unfriendly chemicals as starting materials,” he said. “Those processes are complicated and produce harmful side products. Our method is a very inexpensive, green process.”

Image of colorful tee-shirts by Shutterstock

The post Novel-tee Charges Your Phone, Someday appeared first on Green Prophet.

Arothron was established in 2011 as an enterprise focused on underwater compressed air energy storage (UWCAES).  Arothron is named after a type of pufferfish which can inflate its body into a spherical shape. This Israel-based company’s mascot helps us understand how underwater compressed air storage works. Underwater compressed air energy storage has several advantages. The first is that it can be used wherever there is a deep body of water. Some large Mideastern cities meet this criteria. The second is that because deep water is under high pressure, the containers needn’t be made of high strength steel or rock.  Ordinary concrete or even plastic bladders can be used as an underwater compressed air storage tank.

But first, let me explain how electrical storage can make our grid more efficient.

The World Factbook estimates that Egypt’s per capita electrical consumption averages 154 Watts.  For Saudi Arabia it is 733 and for Qatar it’s 1263.  Since solar panel prices have fallen to less than $1/Watt, an investment of  $150-1500 in solar panels per person should meet demand.  But now we’re comparing peak solar output with average consumer demand. 

What happens if a hot night raises consumption at a time when solar production is zero?

Ask any utility expert whether they prefer wind, solar or coal power and they’ll probably tell you that the first two have a lower capacity factor and are impractical for base load generation. 

The output of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources varies over the course of a day and across a year.  Consumption also varies in an unpredictable manner.

Energy storage can help fill the gaps between varying energy production and consumption.  Many techniques have been tried. Batteries, flywheels, superconducting storage rings and other exotic methods have not yet proven themselves mature enough to compete in the real world.

Pumped storage hydro-power is promising, but it requires that a mountain and lake are conveniently located near the power plant.

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is also a mature technology.  It has been used in cities such as Paris, Dresden and Buenos Ares since the late nineteenth century. But scaling CAES to modern electricity demand is most practical when caverns, salt mines, or other large hollow geological structures are conveniently located.

Toronto based Hydrostor already has a bladder based UWCAS system under development as envisioned in this video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWBQn7xVcwM&w=420&h=315]

Arothron intends to use ordinary concrete for the underwater pressure vessels.  One advantage of UWCAS systems is that expanding air rising from the bottom of the sea should be cooler than ambient summer temperatures.

Because of this the “pollution” from a UWCAS storage plant could provide our cities with clean, cool air.

::Arothron

Image of pufferfish from Shutterstock; other schematics of underwater compressed air energy story from Arothron website

The post Arothron’s Underwater Compressed Air Storage Could Fill Gaps in the Grid appeared first on Green Prophet.

Dubai firm to build wind energy storage for Californian consumption?

Mexico President Felipe Calderon announced last week at the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, that he intends to support a project by Dubai’s RUBENIUS to provide 1 gigawatt of energy storage in Baja California, that would be used to store wind power to be shipped to the US, as well as to Mexico.

“Energy storage is the intelligent way to make renewable energy carbon free. Currently renewables require some sort of backup power–for example: when the wind stops blowing, the most common solution today is carbon based backup systems. Energy storage can end this quandary,” said President Calderon.

Customers would be energy companies and utilities on both sides of the border.
The site, Mexico’s planned Silicon Border, already has existing infrastructure and close proximity to both the Baja California power grid and to the proposed new Sunrise Power Grid expansion to California.

RUBENIUS has developed wind storage technology that utilizes an “energy warehouse” of NaS (Sodium Sulphur) batteries. Smaller NaS  batteries have been tested for wind storage in Japan, and Xcel Energy is testing a wind farm energy storage using sodium sulfur batteries in the US.

But the 1 GW  battery project is the largest use of the technology for wind power storage, and propels both Dubai and Mexico to the forefront in pioneering wind storage, a key technology in advancing to the carbon-constrained future.

To support the project, the company will also build a factory nearby to manufacture the energy storage. Claus Rubenius has already purchased the 350 acres of land for the project. Once built, the 1GW “energy warehouse” is expected to cost $4 billion over the next 5 to 7 years.  Mexico will initiate several beta sites where off-grid communities are provided with either solar or wind power, power storage and water treatment.

“The Mexican operation will house the storage devices and we will have offices in San Diego, California for research and development. The locations enable us to address both Mexico and the US,” said Claus Rubenius, founder and engineer.

The Amplex Group, a RUBENIUS subsidiary, has already installed and commissioned the largest energy storage in the world, in the United Arab Emirates.

Image:  John Sloan 1915

::RUBENIUS

More on battery energy storage
Are Energy Advances in Israel in Parallel With Those Abroad?
Meet Doron Aurbach, Israel’s Energizer
Michigan Looks to Israel to Rev Up Automotive Battery Business

The post Dubai’s RUBENIUS Invited by Mexico to Build 1 GW of Energy Storage on US Border appeared first on Green Prophet.