I kind of rag on people with the grid-tie rooftop panels because if the grid goes down, so does their power.
.
Now it seems a company is installing a “lead flow” backup battery system for the whole city, to prevent brownouts and outages. It’s not enough to power the city during the night, but at least for a few hours in an emergency until regular grid power is restored.
.
They say this won’t replace lithium batteries because it has to be built as a permanent structure; not even close to being portable.
It’s good they’re planning to do this. Are they using a giant water pump system as a battery? A traditional battery would have to be massive and would not be cost effective.
It was a short article. The called it “lead flow” rechargeable technology but I know there are a couple of different versions, some using salt water. The whole thing is supposed to be easily scalable, so I imagine they might add capacity over time as they see fit. It’s supposed to have a 25-30 year lifespan.
.
Thing is, more often than not, our outages come from downed power lines, such as from car accidents. Most of the suburbs have underground lines but there are still too many overhead lines. I’d rather they spend our tax dollars on burying them. We once lost power for 3 hours just because the wind lifted and blew a metal patio cover up into the lines. Other times Mylar balloons shorted the lines and blew out transformers. I have to wonder if terrorists read the news and think, “We can shut down the whole city with a couple hundred balloons.” Don’t laugh; we’ve already seen some clown drove his car into one of the city’s solar panel farms thinking he could shut down the whole city. We have some 6-digit number of panels spread out all over the desert, and of course they only work during the day. 