Xcel Energy
announced the other week that an experiment at its wind farm near Luverne, Minn., proves that batteries can be used to store wind power.
Whether the solution can scale is another question.
Greentech Media takes a closer look at the Xcel Energy's battery trial. The utility integrated an 80-ton sodium sulfur battery into the 11-megawatt wind farm in October 2008. It's shown promising results, the company says.
Batteries are seen as an important piece of the nation's clean-energy solution because wind and solar are intermittent energy sources that often deliver the most power at times of the day when it isn't most needed.
"'This is critical technology,' Forbes Black, a battery technology and energy storage systems engineer, said of Xcel's work. 'We're going to have to figure out ways to store energy for when renewables are not generating and this sounds like a really good step in that direction.'"
Read the Greentech Media article here.