The US Department of Energy recently floated the idea of carving out a place for small coal power plants in the distributed energy landscape of the future, but it looks like the agency’s latest attempt to save coal is a day late and a dollar short. In the latest development, GE has just begun pitching a new energy storage project with the evocative name The Reservoir, and it puts the prospect of a coal powered future where it belongs: on the shelf.
Last week CleanTechnica grabbed a few minutes on the phone with Eric Gebhardt, GE’s Vice President and Strategic Technology Officer, to get some insights into the Reservoir, and he had something to say that will bring little comfort to coal fans.
So, What Is The Reservoir?
When GE announced The Reservoir, it made the implications for renewable energyabundantly clear. GE described the new energy storage project as a “comprehensive” platform that “delivers a suite of customized storage solutions to help customers address new challenges and seek new opportunities in a rapidly transforming power grid that is becoming more highly diversified and distributed.”
That’s kind of a mouthful. What it means in practice is a lesson that grid planners have already absorbed: the old model of large scale, centralized energy generation is, well, old. The rise of digital technology, renewable energy, and distributed energy have resulted in a “paradigm shift” in energy generation and distribution.
Gebhardt’s statement in a press release for The Reservoir is definitive on that score:
GE’s Reservoir platform enables cost-effective distribution, storage, and utilization of cleaner, more reliable power where and when it is needed most. It can fit into most any setting, from centralized grid systems to the most remote villages and communities. The Reservoir also allows energy providers new degrees of flexibility for more intelligently managing and getting the most out of all their power assets.
That sounds pretty fancy, right? The innards consist of a fairly standard lithium-ion energy storage arrangement of 1.2 megawatts and 4 megawatt-hours, but all the system control and operation overlays are exclusive to GE. The “reservoir” name evokes energy storage but it could just as easily refer to the storehouse of knowledge GE brings to the design. Here’s another snippet from the press release:
…It is a modular solution that integrates GE’s Battery Blade design (module stack design) with key technologies from across the company’s portfolio to achieve an industry-leading energy density, footprint and lifetime performance. GE’s proprietary Blade Protection Unit (BPU) actively balances the safety, life, and production of each battery Blade, extending battery life by up to 15 % and reducing fault currents by up to 5X.
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