Gravity Batteries, Green Hydrogen, and a Thorium Reactor for China

2021 was a large calendar year for electrical power-similar information, what with the ongoing hunt for new varieties of electrical power storage and cleaner if not carbon-no cost electricity and occasions and analysis that spotlighted the weak one-way links in our energy grid. As the pandemic ongoing to grind on, it was essentially comforting to know that good individuals in the electrical power sector were being doing the job challenging to continue to keep the lights on, advance the technological know-how, and improve people’s life. IEEE Spectrum did its finest to include all those developments, and these were being the tales that our audience liked finest.

Gravity Electricity Storage Will Present Its Probable in 2021

Why was this Spectrum’s most well-known electrical power tale of the calendar year? Very well, let us imagine. As energy grids just about everywhere increasingly count on intermittent renewable electrical power, batteries and other varieties of electrical power storage that can even out the bumps in offer and need are using on a important position. No battery is excellent, having said that, so engineers continue to keep pushing for new and improved ways to retailer all those electrons. The gravity batteries described in this tale elevate large weights in the air or up mine shafts to retailer extra electricity, releasing the weights later on on to recover the saved electrical power. A single of the firms showcased in the tale, Gravitricity, concluded its 250-kilowatt gravity-battery demonstrator in Edinburgh last April and is now doing the job on a whole-scale deployment at a mine in the Czech Republic.

Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Last but not least Takes Off in North The usa and Europe

Battery makers all over the planet are cranking out lithium-ion batteries of numerous flavors as rapid as they can. Though lithium isn’t particularly in quick offer, extracting it from the ground exacts a enormous environmental expense. Thus the modern boom in battery recycling—and readers’ desire in this tale on how the sector is increasing over and above China and South Korea and into the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Last Might, 1 of the story’s showcased startups, Canada’s Li-Cycle, declared it would get started recycling the manufacturing scrap from Ultium Cell’s US $two.3 billion EV battery plant—that’s GM’s and LG Chem’s new mega-gigafactory in Lordstown, Ohio.

Here’s How We Could Brighten Clouds to Neat the Earth

Geoengineering—altering the earth to mitigate the worst results of local weather change—is an concept that has taken on new currency of late. As world wide temperatures increase, greenhouse gases accumulate, and all symptoms level to Actually Lousy Things occurring in the coming many years, Spectrum audience are plainly wanting for a way out of our current local weather predicament. This article, by researchers at the Palo Alto Analysis Middle (PARC) and the University of Washington, is 1 attainable respond to. The simple concept is to add particles of sea salt to the ambiance to brighten clouds and interesting the earth. We’ll continue to have to do the challenging do the job of reducing carbon emissions, but geoengineering could be a way to get us some time.

Solar-to-Hydrogen Tech Sees “Remarkable” Effectiveness Bounce

A further large development in the electrical power sector is the return of the hydrogen overall economy. This time all over, nevertheless, the emphasis is on “green hydrogen”—that is, hydrogen generated employing clear electrical power these as solar or wind energy. Most of the world’s hydrogen will come from deeply polluting procedures. And most green hydrogen manufacturing continue to relies on electrolyzers, which them selves take in tons of electricity. This tale looks at promising analysis out of Japan’s Shinshu University on gentle-absorbing resources to break up drinking water into hydrogen and oxygen directly—cutting the electrolyzer out of the equation. As the tale notes, it will take pretty a little bit a lot more R&D until eventually this method is “ready for primary-time hydrogen manufacturing.”

China Suggests It’s Closing in on Thorium Nuclear Reactor

Also receiving a 2nd look: nuclear energy! Though some modern efforts connect with for radical new reactor types, this report highlights an aged method with a modern day spin. Molten salt nuclear reactors fueled by thorium were being first investigated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the nineteen fifties. A new molten salt reactor reportedly currently being crafted by China follows the Oak Ridge design and style but also incorporates the exact variety of superior-temperature salt pumps utilized in concentrated solar-energy plants.

What the Texas-Freeze Fiasco Tells Us About the Long term of the Grid

In this very clear-eyed thing to consider of last winter’s deadly deep freeze in Texas, Robert Hebner, director of the Middle for Electromechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, describes the converging components and troubled history that contributed to the catastrophic blackout. “It appears rather very clear that what occurred in Texas was probable preventable with quickly available and longstanding engineering procedures,” Hebner concludes. “But a collective, and probable implicit, judgment was made that the chance to be mitigated was so smaller that mitigation would not be well worth the expense. And character ‘messed’ with that judgment.”

A single Atmospheric Nuclear Explosion Could Just take Out the Electrical power Grid

A further well-known tale in the “things that are negative for the energy grid” category was this piece by nationwide security author Natasha Bajema. She looked at a modern examine out of the U.S. Geological Study and the University of Colorado on the probable results of detonating a several-kiloton nuclear weapon in the ambiance and generating a superior-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP). (To be honest, International Plan, in a comparable 2020 examination, rated the EMP issue as extremely substantially outsized and “the last detail you have to have to fear about in a nuclear explosion.”) The conductivity of the Earth, the Geological Study experts discovered, performs an significant position in the consequence, with low-conductivity locations most at chance of struggling a “grid-crippling energy surge,” as the electric subject travels out through superior-voltage energy strains. Here’s hoping that doesn’t come about in 2022, or any other calendar year.

Off-Grid Solar’s Killer Application

Spectrum contributing editor Peter Fairley traveled to Kenya to report on a boom in agriculture driven by off-grid solar energy and productive solar-driven irrigation pumps. The pumps faucet into large outlets of groundwater that lie not way too much underground and include substantially of sub-Saharan Africa. Solar-irrigation technological know-how, blended with microlending payment ideas, lets smaller farmers improve crop yields, lengthen increasing seasons, and neutralize the results of drought. It’s a earn-earn-earn for a portion of the planet that could definitely use a victory right now.

How Significantly Electricity Does It Just take to Mature a Tomato?

Last of all but never leastly, Spectrum columnist and deep thinker Vaclav Smil contemplated the electrical power footprint of the tomato. Field tomatoes, unsurprisingly, are the the very least electrical power-intensive to develop, although boosting hydroponic tomatoes grown in greenhouses can take in 60 times as substantially electrical power. Food items for believed as we near out 2021.