Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands is testing an unusual kind of battery that could prove to be a better, cheaper way to store wind and solar energy.
Developed by US startup ESS, the device is known as an iron flow battery. The airport is currently trialling the technology to power some of its electric ground power units. These machines provide electricity to parked planes to run systems such as lights, avionics, and air conditioning.
But why is Schiphol betting on this lesser-known type of energy storage instead of mature lithium-ion batteries? The answer can be traced back over four decades to a lab in Cleveland, Ohio.
Dusting off an old idea
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University developed the first iron flow battery in the early 1980s. But the idea remained confined to the shelves of academia. At a time when oil was cheap, developing long-duration energy storage wasn’t a top priority.
However, when chemical engineers Craig Evans and Julia Song stumbled across the Case Western research 30 years later, the energy landscape looked very different. Massive wind and solar plants were coming online. For the first time, electricity supplies became, to some extent, dependent on the highly unpredictable patterns of the wind and the sun.
The
Source : The Next Web