permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:18 PM, John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net> wrote:

> The main bonus point for me is that it is supposedly possible to get rid of
> "conventional" highly toxic waste in a thorium reactor. For that alone it
> should be seriously explored. If it could replace planet destroying dirty
> energy it should be pushed as much as we can.
> But... even the cleanest, safest energy form is not capable of undoing
> terminal degradation that we see happening all over the planet. For that
> there are no simple solutions.
> John
>


Very large storage battery arrays are used now for industrial power storage.
Sodium Sulphur Battery
http://inhabitat.com/bob-americas-biggest-sodium-sulfur-battery-powers-a-texas-town/
"The giant sodium sulfur powerhouse, which is literally the size of a
house, can store four megawatts of power for up to eight hours."
Dry Cell Battery (uses proprietary materials)
http://inhabitat.com/worlds-largest-wind-energy-storage-system-launches-in-texas/
An Austin-based company, Xtreme Power
<http://www.xtremepower.com/>engineered the large-scale power storage
system, which they will continue
to manage. According to
CleanTechnia<http://cleantechnica.com/2013/01/24/largest-wind-energy-storage-facility-in-u-s-fires-up-in-texas/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29&utm_content=Google+Reader>,
the system is largely comprised of
PowerCell<http://www.xtremepower.com/xp-technology/powercells.php>batteries;
a “12 volt, 1 kWh, dry cell battery based on a proprietary
formula of alloys including copper, lead and tellurium.” Xtreme Power
claims that these batteries are less hazardous that others in regular
usage, and are more easily recycled.
<>
So, if thorium-fueled power plants are sited locally to form a distributed
generation system with co-located wind and solar equipment at each, then
battery storage such as this could complete each array providing power
using short service runs to neighborhoods and businesses in areas with
energy demands matching the generation capability of each node in a greater
distributed network while allowing access to spare, unused power stored in
other nodes during peak usage periods.