The market
The global pumping-rebuilding market reached just over 127 GW in 2010. Hydroelectricity, including pumping accumulation, is the most widely used renewable energy production technology today. Pumping-turbine is the cogeneration of hydroelectricity, as is steam for coal-fired power plants. The pumping-turbine uses low-cost electricity and out of point to pump water from a tank lower than a higher altitude. During periods of high demand, water circulates in turbines to produce electricity. Even if pumping implies loss of energy, income increases by selling electricity at higher prices in peak periods. The European Union had a net capacity of just under 40 GW, which represents more than a third of global capacity, or 5% of the basic electricity production capacity of the EU. Europe is the most active to increase storage capacities. Japan has invested over the years and has 26 GW, which represents a quarter of global capacity. The United States has 22 GW, about a fifth of global storage, and 2.5% of the basic energy production capacity of the United States, or 1088 GW. The pumping accumulation market is expected to grow 60% over the next four years, reaching 203 GW by 2014. Additional investments represent a little less than $ 60 billion in capital spending. The World Bank and the European Investment Bank are proactive by providing funds for the expansion of pumping-winding from Portugal, Switzerland, Spain and from the United Kingdom to Russia, Indonesia, China and Vietnam. Cooperation between RWE, one of the main electricity suppliers in Europe, and RAG, the German operator of coal mines, with a view to jointly developing an integrated pumping and wind power project in the mountains of Coal slag is a new interesting advance. The concept integrates intermittent wind energy into hydroelectric energy which could be provided in less than a minute. The system will use wind energy during the high air and low demand currents to pump water 50 meters higher at the top of the mountain of waste. It should be operational by 2016. Voish Hydro (Germany) is a market leader in the supply of generators and turbines, with more than 40,000 units installed. Last year, this company experienced strong competition from Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo (Japan) and Alstom (France).
Innovation
Since renewable energy is intermittently produced, it must be saved by energy storage. Traditional storage technology has been the batteries, but this chemical solution is only viable for small installations. The Sodium-Soufre battery reaches only a capacity of 200 MW. The storage of energy by compressed air (CAES) as an alternative has trouble winning on the market, with only 2 applications worldwide in the world. An extremely low friction inertia steering wheel, placed in an empty room, stores the energy produced by composite materials to provide centripetal forces. Hydrogen, tablet or liquefied, is stored to be converted into energy and/or heat. Thus, although pumping-turbine is the most used system today, one of its main obstacles is its impact on the environment and the issuance of permits, which takes an average of a decade. James Fiske, specialist in magnetic levitation (Maglev), obtained his diploma in electrical and computer engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978. He worked for Hughes Aircraft with signal processing systems, he is the main architect 'A mini-super-computer and he designed computer-assisted engineering software. He holds six patents. While imagining a new goods transportation class by Maglev, it was attracted by the use of gravity as a network of electricity storage on a network scale. He looked at the pumping-turbine and decided to push this proven technology in a new direction: downwards. He realized that the two large reservoirs and the environmental disruption could be overcome by installing a module of gravity energy (GPM) underground. This modular system has a low ecological footprint and can be installed almost wherever an energy storage is necessary. James then created Gravity Power as a derivative of Launchpoint Technologies, where he occupies the position of vice-president of advanced systems.
The first cash flow
James realized that we should not only focus on how to capture the energy of the sun, wind and waves, but that we should also have the ability to keep it for many hours after sunset Sun and the end of the wind. He assessed the total investment cost per kW and realized that the batteries vary between 1,750 and 3,640 dollars per kW, while the pumping-turbine could reach the lower limit of $ 1,500-comparable to batteries The cheapest, but for more than double storage hours (10 hours). With a wide access to the design and computer -assisted simulations, James concluded that a storage installation of 2 GW requires less than 2 hectares. As technology is based on a deep well, filled with water and reinforced with concrete, it will resist earthquakes. The GPM is a vertical column dug a few hundred meters in the ground and filled with water. A huge piston, made up of massive concrete pancakes and iron ore for high density and low cost, rests on the water column with sliding joints to avoid leaks, to store energy and it is lowered to evacuate energy by a return pipe. When the energy is abundant, the water is pumped downwards and moves the weight and the water column upwards. The release of the weight causes water through a turbine and produces energy if necessary. A well could store more than 50 MW of energy for four hours, or 200 MW of storage hours. Gravity Power collaborates with Robbins Co, the inventor of the mechanical taupe, to adapt his technology to the vertical tunnelage capable of digging 100 meters deep in 24 hours. Speed, low cost and construction from easy -to -available inexpensive materials should reduce investment costs by at least half and time between decision and implementation in terms of a few years instead of a decade. The first unit was installed in Texas in 2011.
The opportunity
The introduction of renewable energies requires energy storage for commercial purposes, which represents a gigantic scale. One of the possibilities is therefore to work with the available wells, of which thousands have been dug in recent centuries by mining companies all over the world. The Minewater project in Heerlen, in the Netherlands, already uses the thermal difference in deep mines for cooling and heating residential areas. Today, we do not only use temperature, which is a proven technology in the case of the Netherlands, but we use the presence of water, we locate the ideal wells, we install seals and we use the Water widely available in disused and abandoned mines, which must very often be pumped, in the heart of the GPM. In a country like South Africa, where the mining industry pumps millions of liters of water, which represents up to 25% of all the energy consumption of mines around Johannesburg, the breakthrough offered by James And his team would ensure a permanent power supply. With the wells that descend up to 4000 meters, the mining companies are just starting to grasp the enormous potential they conceal.
