Renewable energy storage is one step closer becoming a reality in the Northwest. Researchers are proposing a new system that could store enough wind energy to power 80,000 homes for a month. But researchers aren’t proposing fields lined with batteries. They’re using some of the Columbia River Basin’s natural geography and compressed air.
If Northwest states are to meet renewable energy goals, they’ll need to find a way to store power. Wind and solar vary with the weather. Most of the region’s wind power kicks up at the same time as hydropower. That can produce more energy than the power grid can handle.
Pete McGrail is with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.
“Without a storage technology, that energy is going to be wasted," McGrail says. "Right now we don’t have anything to do with it. We either have to shut down the wind farms or spill excess water over the dams.”
Now, researchers have found a way to capture extra energy and store it until people need it. This technology would divert that wind-power to machines that compress air. Next, that compressed air would be pumped thousands of feet underground into airtight cavities in the earth’s basalt subsurface. Read More