{"id":13550,"date":"2013-05-22T11:48:01","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T08:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/add-energy.ro\/how-giant-concrete-balls-could-make-wind-power-more-efficient\/"},"modified":"2013-05-22T11:48:01","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T08:48:01","slug":"how-giant-concrete-balls-could-make-wind-power-more-efficient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/how-giant-concrete-balls-could-make-wind-power-more-efficient\/","title":{"rendered":"How Giant Concrete Balls Could Make Wind Power More Efficient"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t        To get over this problem, engineers have devised a number of ways to store energy generated when it's windy for disbursement during the times when it is not. Ideas include giant flywheels<\/a>, carbon-neutral natural gas<\/a> and giant batteries made from gravel and argon gas<\/a>. Now Alexander Slocum, Brian Hodder and their colleagues at MIT have demonstrated a new way to store that energy — giant hollow concrete balls. They published their results this month in Proceedings of the IEEE<\/em><\/a>.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\"how<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t           Storage Concept: As the wind turbines turn, they pump water out of the hollow spheres. Once the wind dies down, the water rushes back into to sphere, spinning a turbine which generates power to send to the electrical grid. Alexander Slocum, MIT<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t         The concept is pretty simple: As floating offshore wind turbines churn, they send most of the generated power to the grid. Some of the power, though, goes to pumping seawater out from 25-meter-wide hollow spheres which sit on the seafloor. As soon as the wind dies down, the pumps turn off, and the seawater rushes back into the spheres through a turbine; the water turns the turbine, which then generates electricity. The researchers calculated that one such sphere, moored in 400-meter-deep water, could store up to six megawatt-hours of power. A few hundred of those would be enough to offset an hour of energy from a typical nuclear power plant.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t         According to the researchers, initial estimates indicate that one sphere would cost $12 million to build and deploy, which is three or four times the cost of a typical onshore wind turbine. But worrying about the cost is still a bit premature, as only a 30-inch-diameter proof-of-concept has thus far been built. The MIT team has plans to build a sphere with a diameter of three meters, but further funding will be required to build a 10-meter sphere intended for undersea testing. Still, it could be worth the investment — the researchers estimate that floating offshore wind farms with energy storage capacity could satisfy more than 20 percent of our energy needs.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t—– source   popsci.com  —–<\/b><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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        To get over this problem, engineers have devised a number of ways to store energy generated when it's windy for disbursement during the times when it is not. Ideas include giant flywheels, carbon-neutral natural gas and giant batteries made from gravel and argon gas. Now Alexander Slocum, Brian Hodder and their colleagues at … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,349],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-informatii-din-presa-internationala","category-international-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/add-energy.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}