I am sure you have all read about how when the sun doesn’t shine or wind stops blowing, that the biggest challenge for a clean renewables based energy grid is storage. This is, as the title of this blog indicates, the achilles heel of clean energy. Well, I recently came across a technology that meets some of the problems for smaller storage applications such as home and small business.
Lithium Ion technology is great where energy density, weight and size are important. It has been focused on things like computers, cell phones, cars and planes. The problem is the number of recharge cycles, fire hazard and cost. Typically, Lion tech batteries start to lose charging efficiency/capacity after 600 cycles and are pretty much done at 1000-1200 cycles. For a home or small business this is a bit expensive as they will need to be replaced every 5 years if you are planning to maximize your solar/wind and minimize power from the grid.
However, if you have space in your garage or a dedicated power room, then I would suggest looking into Lithium Ferro Phosphate technology (Fortress Power) that although larger footprint from Lithium Ion (Tesla Power Wall) has higher capacity, higher output, no fire danger, is good for 3-6000 cycles and lower cost per watt (~66%).
I have been looking for an alternative to Lithium Ion to use on the Washington project and am very excited about this technology.
SZ