Energy Storage – Options and Opportunities

I will briefly review the drivers for renewable and clean energy technologies, and the challenges in the widespread use of renewables.  In particular, I will focus on the need for inexpensive and reliable energy storage approaches if inherently intermittent and transient renewable sources are to gain broad acceptance.  As a specific example, I will tell a story from our group related to thermal energy storage in Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants that can decouple solar collection from power production.  I will describe in some detail thermocline tank design with molten salt as the storage medium, long-term stability of such systems, integration of storage models into system-level solar power plant simulations that enable investigation of the performance in response to year-long sunlight data and power block operation, and their influence on CSP plant levelized cost of electricity.  During the discussion period, I would be glad to allude to policy realities and challenges related to clean energy options.

(Related papers from our work are available at: https://engineering.purdue.edu/CTRC/energy/research.html