Lead Acid Batteries to Store Energy in S&T’s Ecovillage

By Halloween, Missouri University of Science and Technology’s new EcoVillage microgrid will be up and running on solar panels and storing excess energy with lead acid batteries.

The houses in Missouri S&T’s EcoVillage will use
lead acid batteries to store and distribute
energy starting in fall 2017. 

In conjunction with the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC), Missouri S&T’s Microgrid Industrial Consortium partners Doe Run, Ameren and Azimuth Energy are designing the EcoVillage microgrid. Missouri S&T researchers Dr. Mehdi Ferdowsi, professor of electrical and computer engineering; Dr. Pourya Shamsi, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Dr. Fatih Dogan, professor of materials science and engineering, also are working on the design.

“Despite competition from newer energy storage chemistries, such as the lithium ion batteries in our first microgrid, lead acid batteries still retain a large share of the high-power battery market,” says Angie Rolufs, director of the Center for Sustainability at Missouri S&T and leader of the consortium. “This alone is a good reason for us to include them as an energy storage option in our next microgrid. This new microgrid will provide a new ‘living lab’ from which S&T researchers can collect data and conduct research in a variety of areas, including S&T’s Smart Living signature research area.”

Read the Science and Technology Research News story - “Lead Acid Batteries to Store Energy in S&T’s Ecovillage.”