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The US wind industry has been fighting an uphill battle against the sharp U-turn in federal energy policy, but wind power keeps on insisting upon itself. The latest development involves one of the largest energy storage projects in the world, a new 5 gigawatt-hour behemoth taking shape in South Dakota that deploys more than 200 blocks of solid carbon in a system that has been compared to a giant toaster oven.
Beating The Wind Power Curtailment Problem
The new energy storage project was commissioned by the leading biofuel firm POET to reduce the cost of natural gas consumed by its Big Stone City ethanol plant in North Dakota. Once fully up and running, it will suck excess, low-cost wind power out of wind turbines during off-peak hours, when the turbines would otherwise be curtailed due to low demand, and deploy it for use at the POET facility.
The firm behind the storage system is Antora Energy, a California-based startup that has developed specialized carbon blocks to store excess energy from wind or solar farms. They heat up and glow with light when charged with electricity, and they are dual-purpose. Where conventional batteries only discharge electricity, the Antora system can discharge electricity or produce high heat to to run industrial process, whichever is needed.
