Tech

New technique turns abandoned mines into batteries


Turn an abandoned mine into a battery

Underground gravity energy storage system: diagram of different system parts. Credit: Hunt et al.

A new technique called Underground Gravity Energy Storage turns decommissioned mines into long-term energy storage solutions, thereby supporting a sustainable energy transition.

Renewable energy sources are at the heart of energy conversion towards a more sustainable future. However, since sources such as sun and wind are inherently variable and inconsistent, it is important to find ways to store energy in an accessible and efficient way. While there are many effective solutions for everyday energy storageThe most common are batteries, a cost-effective long-term solution that is still lacking.

In a new study led by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), an international team of researchers has developed a new way to store energy by transporting sand into landfills. wild. underground mines. The new technique, called Underground Gravity Energy Storage (UGES), proposes an efficient long-term energy storage solution while taking advantage of now defunct mining sites, potentially to millions of locations worldwide.

The work was published in the journal energy.

UGES generates electricity when prices are high by lowering sand into an underground mine and converting the potential energy of the sand into electricity through regenerative brakethen raise the sand from the mine to the upper reservoir using electric motorcycle to store energy when electricity is cheap. The main components of the UGES are the shaft, the motor/generator, the upper and lower storage locations, and the mining equipment. The deeper and wider the mine shaft, the more energy can be extracted from the plant, and the larger the mine, the higher the energy storage capacity of the plant.

“When a mine closes, it lays off thousands of workers. This wreaks havoc on communities that rely solely on mines for their economic output. UGES will create some vacancies because the mine will provide energy storage after decommissioning,” said Julian Hunt, a researcher in the IIASA Energy, Climate and Environment Program and lead author of the study. “The mines already have the basic infrastructure and are connected to electricity networkssignificantly reduce costs and facilitate the deployment of UGES plants.”

Other energy storage methods, such as batteries, lose energy due to self-discharge over long periods of time. UGES’s energy storage medium is sand, meaning no energy is lost during self-discharge, allowing for extremely long-term energy storage from weeks to years.

The investment cost of UGES is about 1 to 10 USD/kWh and the cost of electricity capacity is about 2 USD/kWh. The technology is estimated to have a global potential of 7 to 70 TWh, with most of this potential concentrated in China, India, Russia and the United States.

“To decarbonize the economy, we need to rethink the energy system based on innovative solutions that use existing resources. Turning abandoned mines into energy storage is one thing. examples of many solutions exist all around us and we just need to change the way we deploy them,” said Behnam Zakeri, study co-author and researcher in the Energy, Climate and Environment Program IIASA’s school concluded.

More information:
Julian David Hunt et al., Underground Gravity Energy Storage: Long-Term Energy Storage Solutions, energy (2023). DOI: 10.3390/en16020825

quote: New technique for turning abandoned mines into batteries (2023, 12 Jan) taken January 12, 2023 from https://techxplore.com/news/2023-01-technique-abandoned-batteries.html

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