On Fri, 12 Aug 2016 08:51:14 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

On 11/08/2016 23:02, John Rumm wrote:
On 11/08/2016 17:58, Capitol wrote:

Read a Telegraph article today on these. Do they have a
future?

Nice in that they have a long life and should not lose capacity over
time. However the normal problem of energy density still exists - many
offer less than 1MJ per litre (compared to 43MJ/l for petrol)


I don't think they are intended to replace petrol.
They could be used as "pumped" storage on the grid to get windymills to
work better.

I haven't done the calculations but I think the interest stems from the
fact that they do offer a viable alternative to pumped hydro storage,
especially when you've run out of viable 'topology' to make future hydro
pumped storage worth the effort (you need large scale projects which need
suitable topology also on a large scale).

100,000l tanks aren't that big.

The PV solar or wind farms they could serve would dwarf such Organic
flow battery add-on installations. However, grid power scale batteries
require significant levels of investment, hence the ongoing research to
find the best possible solution (best bang for your buck, least impact on
and risk to the environment).


Dealing with the waste could be a long term problem though.

That's obviously a major concern in making the final choice of Organic
Flow Battery technology. There'll almost certainly be a trade off between
energy density and toxicity of the chemistry employed.

Whilst the most obvious benefit will be to the 'renewable energy'
operators (who will foot the bill for co-sited energy storage) it's also
of benefit to the conventional energy operators who are currently relying
on pumped storage stations on the grid (Ffestiniog and Dinorwig in North
Wales for example) to smooth out demand.

A few more grid storage facilities scattered around the country wouldn't
come amiss to both improve operating efficiency and provide additional
resiliency to the grid. There's every incentive to get the research done
along this particular avenue, not only to find the best solution but also
to prove that this *will* be the correct solution at the end of the day.
It might turn out that the best solution is simply to add a few more
Nukes to the grid. :-)

--
Johnny B Good