The element vanadium may be closing a lot of "clean coal" spokespersons' mouths soon, as it central to a new battery design that may solve renewable energy's biggest problem: consistency.
We've been hearing about wind power and solar power for decades, but we're still lighting most of our houses with power from coal. There is a reason for this. Any energy generated by the moods of Mother Nature is subject to her mood swings and these can, if too heavily relied upon, cut off your lights and TV in the middle of Conan O'Brien. What large-scale renewable energy needs is a long-lasting battery to store energy in times of plenty, and discharge it smoothly and reliably in times of lack. The Vanadiam Redox Battery (VRB) might be the best candidate for this.
The VRB is a "flow battery," and has a leg up on the kinds of batteries you are used to. Unlike the re-chargable in your five-year-old cell phone (or is that just me?) there is no memory effect to gradually reduce the battery's capacity over a number of charges. The VRB can be recharged thousands of times, because of its fundamentally different design. Also, the VRB is able to give energy on-demand, and recharges quickly.
With this technology in place, as it will hopefully soon be, our children may eventually see the wind and the sun as standard energy sources, instead of energy that's just out of reach.
Unlike coal plants and nuclear reactors, the VRB battery is very scalable, working well built large or small, and this raises a more exciting possibility. A personal, household battery, hooked up to a wind turbine in the back yard and maybe some solar panels on the roof. In the same spirit as growing your own free tomatoes, you may harvest your own free power (two words that don't often get to shake hands) and be able to warn the power company not to let the door hit it in the butt on the way out.
If this really is the technology that pulls renewable energy into the mainstream, and if large companies with large interests don't get in the way, it will be a big (BIG) bite out of our collective carbon footprint. And, if you ask a strip-mined mountain, and its destroyed ecosystem, it's a leap in the right direction.
For more information, visit Discover Magazine or The Energy Blog.
