Recharging Our Batteries

On Sunday I started attending the AQMD's Green Tech Connect Forum, for which I had also done some part-time work.  After helping in the registration of about 500 to 600 attendees, I had some down time today, so I attended a panel on battery technology and storage.  The technology’s improving, and while I love my 2002 Altima, I have my eyes set on a Toyota plug-in hybrid that’s coming out in 2011.

Battery technology is crucial for three main reasons:  they reduce greenhouse gasses, emit zero emissions, and help secure our domestic energy supply.  But while we’ve been aware of this emerging technology for years, we’re still not driving cute little electric cars to work that we can recharge at a parking meter; nor do we have batteries serving as backup power attached to the side of our houses.

Mark Duvall at EPRI told us that the overriding issues with batteries are cost, durability, and safety.  No matter how technically advanced a battery’s storage technology may be, if the surrounding systems are poorly engineered and implemented, you’re still going to be stuck on your local grid or refilling your gas tank at a local service station.

One company improving battery technology is Pentadyne, based in Chatsworth, CA.  Pentadyne uses “flywheel” systems, which store energy kinetically, not chemically.  In English, this means energy is stored using a huge steel disk rotating at a relatively slow speed.  Their systems leave a much smaller carbon footprint, require less maintenance, and have a longer life cycle.  Pentadyne’s products are particularly suited for rail systems, which spend huge sums of money for backup power in order to keep those trains running on time.

Most batteries use lead acid technology—such as what’s sitting under the hood of your car.  If you’ve ever been late to work because your car battery died, you can probably relate to these batteries’ drawbacks:  limited charge capacity, toxic materials (although the US is relatively successful in recycling most of its lead acid batteries), and unreliability.

Depending on what source you read, US companies lose about $100 billion in business annually because of lost power generation.  Backup power generation systems generally use diesel or other dirty fossil-based fuels, so you’ve got that polluting factor as well.

But like so many other energy technologies, battery storage development needs a push from all levels of government.  Local governments should give consumers incentives to install battery storage systems in their homes, while state and federal agencies could give grants and tax credits to companies such as Pentadyne, which are contributing to our energy efficient—and hopefully independent—future.