Zinc-air battery energy storage system

Today’s power grid has limited ability to store excess energy, so electricity must constantly be over-generated to assure reliable supply. Though wind and solar power are promising clean alternatives to fossil fuels, their natural unpredictability and intermittency present major challenges to delivery of the consistent power that is necessary to operate today's grid. There is an urgent need that renewable energy should be stored for future grid-use at any location. Flexible, large-scale storage would create a stronger and more robust electric grid by enabling renewables to contribute to reliable power generation. For this reason, the low-cost, rechargeable and high-power zinc-air batteries have been developed to be used to store renewable energy. Zinc-air batteries are traditionally found in small, non-rechargeable devices like hearing aids because they are well-suited to delivering low levels of power for long periods of time. Historically, Zinc-air batteries have not been as useful for applications which require periodic bursts of power, like on the electrical grid. However, through the advanced rechargeable zinc-air battery technology, the goal could be achieved by combining the high energy, low cost, and long run-time of a Zinc-air battery with new chemistry providing high power, high efficiency, and fast response. This new energy storage system could allow large grid-storage batteries to provide much more power on very urgent demand of power for utilities with much more versatile performance.Master of Science (Power Engineering