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Building The World’s Largest Battery Energy Storage Plant | Earth Wise

April 6, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Monterey County Planning Commission has unanimously approved a joint project between Tesla and Pacific Gas and Electric to turn the Moss Landing Power Plant in California into the world’s largest battery energy storage facility.

The Moss Landing Power Plant is a natural gas-powered electricity generation plant located at the midpoint of California’s Monterey Bay. At one time, it was the largest power plant in the state of California with a generation capacity of 2560 MW but has been gradually shutting down over time.

The new facility will incorporate 1.2 GWh of storage capacity for energy generated by solar and wind systems. The stored energy will be available for use during periods of high energy demand and lower output. This is about ten times larger than Tesla’s Hornsdale energy storage project in Australia, which was three times bigger than any other batter storage facility when it was built a few years ago. In 2018, the battery system at Hornsdale made back a third of its cost in just one year. The systems make use of Tesla’s Megapack battery products which come in pre-assembled units that provide 3 MWh of energy storage capacity.

The project will make use of existing power lines to transmit energy around Monterey County and parts of Silicon Valley. Tesla and PG&E hope to break ground in early spring with completion scheduled for the end of the year. California has been adding massive amounts of wind and solar power to its electrical grid and incorporating energy storage is an important step towards creating a truly resilient power system.

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Humongous Tesla Battery Plant Approved In California Is 10× Bigger Than World’s Biggest Battery Plant

Photo, posted September 22, 2019, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Removing Microplastics with Magnetism

October 7, 2019 By EarthWise 2 Comments

A new method for removing microplastics from the oceans has emerged from, of all things, a science fair project. An Irish 18-year-old named Fionn Ferreira developed his project for the annual Google Science Fair and it won the grand prize of $50,000 in educational funding.

The teenager was walking on the beach in his hometown and ran across a stone with oil and plastic stuck to it and became focused on the problem of microplastics increasingly entering the environment.

His idea was to make use of ferrofluids, which are nontoxic magnetic fluids made of oil and magnetite, which is an iron-based mineral. In the presence of water, the ferrofluids attract microplastics because both have similar properties.

Ferreira added oil and magnetite to water and mixed in a solution of microplastic particles. When the microplastics latched onto the ferrofluids, he dipped a magnet into the solution several times and the magnet removed both substances, leaving clear water. After almost 1000 tests, he demonstrated the method to be 88% effective in removing a variety of microplastics from water; a result even better than his original hypothesis of an 85% removal rate.

Ferreira is planning to further his education at a prestigious chemistry institute in the Netherlands starting in the fall.

According to a recent study, Americans eat, drink and breathe between 74,000 and 121,000 microplastic particles each year and, if they drink bottle water only instead of tap water, an additional 90,000 particles. So, a science fair project that might provide a way to get rid of most these things is definitely prize-worthy.

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This Irish teenager may have a solution for a plastic-free ocean

Photo, posted April 25, 2016, courtesy of Boe Eide via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Solar-Powered Airport

August 12, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport in Tennessee has become the first airport in the United States to run entirely on solar power. The small airport operates over 60,000 flights a year and has recently completed work on a 12-acre, 2.64-megawatt solar farm that generates enough clean electricity to account for the airport’s total energy needs.

The project was funded largely by the Federal Aviation Administration, cost $10 million, and took nine years to complete. The facility uses onsite batteries to help power operations at night. The installation is expected to last 30 to 40 years.

The solar farm is in the southwest corner of the airfield on land that is unusable for aviation purposes. It is visible from the two runways at the airport.

Officials from nearly 50 airports around the world have visited or contacted the Chattanooga airfield in recent years to learn about its solar operations. Several major airports, including San Diego and London’s Gatwick, have also installed solar panels that provide a portion of their power needs. The world’s busiest airport – Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson – is looking into constructing renewable energy microgrids to power part of its operations. Airports generally have plenty of vacant land that can be used for solar panels that can lower their power bills.

The largest airport solar installation is actually Cochin International in Kerala, India, which became 100% solar powered in 2015. It is the 7^th largest airport in India. Its solar array has nearly 30 megawatts of capacity. Airport managers there were fed up with huge electric bills and invested about $9 million to install the solar array. It is expected to have paid for itself in the next couple of years.

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Chattanooga Becomes First U.S. Airport to Run Entirely On Solar

Photo courtesy of Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Future Of Animals

June 12, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Researchers at the University of Southampton have forecast a global shift towards smaller birds and mammals over the next century.

According to the research team, small, fast-lived, highly fertile, and insect-eating animals, which can thrive in all sorts of habitats, will predominate in the future. Rodents and songbirds are examples of the so-called ‘winners.’ Less adaptable, slow-lived species, requiring specialist habitats, will be more likely to face extinction. Among the so-called ‘losers’ are the black rhino and the tawny eagle.

The researchers focused on more than 15,000 living mammals and birds and considered the following five characteristics: body mass, breadth of habitat, diet, litter or clutch size, and length of time between generations. Using this data and data from the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, the researchers used modern statistical tools to project and evaluate the loss of biodiversity.

The study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Communications, predicts that the average body mass of mammals will collectively decline by 25% over just the next 100 years. Over the past 130,000 years, the average body size of mammals only declined 14%.

This substantial downsizing of animals is forecasted to occur due to the effects of ecological change. But, according to the study’s lead author, the loss of these species, which perform unique functions within the global ecosystem, may ironically wind up being a driver of change as well.

The researchers hope future studies will further explore the long-term effects of species extinction on habitats and ecosystems.

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Study predicts shift to smaller animals over next century

Photo, posted April 6, 2013, courtesy of Nic Trott via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Big Success From A Big Battery

January 1, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In the fall of 2017, Tesla took on the challenge of installing a 100-megawatt battery storage system in South Australia in under 100 days, promising that the system would be free if it was not built in time. The project was actually completed in 54 days.

The system is located at the Hornsdale Wind Farm, which consists of 99 wind turbines with a generation capacity of 315 MW. The Hornsdale Power Reserve installation is the world’s largest lithium-ion battery system and, after a year of operation,has proven to be a smashing success. Estimates are that the project has reduced costs associated with stabilizing the energy grid by about $29 million. The cost of the system was about $87 million, so it is paying for itself quite rapidly. The wind farm and battery systems are owned and operated by a French renewable energy company.

The battery storage system provides a variety of different services to the electric grid. The primary motivation for it was to achieve system security and reduce the risk of blackouts and load shedding. Having the battery system in place protects the regional interconnection from tripping,which reduces the risk of separation of South Australia from the National Electricity market. The system also provides so-called ancillary services such as frequency control and other forms of electricity supply regulation.

The most significant contribution of the Hornsdale Power Reserve is that it has raised the profile of energy storage technology and demonstrated its unique capabilities. Based on the success of the system, there are now about 2,500 MWh of new storage projects announced by the public and private sectors in Australia.

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