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.”

W.A. plans Australia’s biggest solar+storage micro-grid in Onslow

Western Australia’s regional utility Horizon Power has launched a project to deliver what it claims will be Australia’s largest solar and storage-based microgrid once complete in early 2018.

The project, to be developed in the northwest town of Onslow, will bring together a new 5.25 MW gas-fired power plant, with a mix of distributed and utility-scale solar, to be coupled with battery storage.

“This will be Australia’s largest distributed energy microgrid, creating a new era of energy competition and efficiency for households and businesses,” said WA Energy Minister and Treasurer Mike Nahan, in a statement announcing the project.

The project will see Onslow, a town used as a launching base for the massive Wheatstone LNG project owned by Chevron, powered 50 per cent by renewable energy by early 2018.

But Nahan said it was likely that would grow to around 70 per cent renewable energy, which is about the mark being reached, or planned to reach, in smaller projects in King Island, Tasmania, and Coober Pedy in South Australia.

Read the RenewEconomy story - “W.A. plans Australia’s biggest solar+storage micro-grid in Onslow.”