Google's secret plan to store light with salt and antifreeze

[OyaYansa]

Alphabet, that is, Google, works on numerous technology projects, many of which will never come to light. One of its most secret sections, X, has developed in recent years all kinds of projects, some with great success, such as Google's autonomous car, and others not so much, as the Google Glass glasses.

Laboratory X is working on a project called Malta, a secret power plant that would have the ability to store electricity for days, coming from renewable energies. This would help to correct one of the most important handicaps of renewable energies.

As everyone knows, electricity can not be stored for long in large quantities. It can be stored on a small scale in batteries, and only for a few days in power plants prepared for it (which are basically huge batteries).

With artificially created electrical sources, such as fossil fuel combustion, nuclear or electric power plants, production can be regulated as a function of consumption to waste little electricity. But with clean energies, it is much more complicated. The sun only heats during the day and the wind blows in gusts and with different intensity, so depending on factors like the time of day, the season or the force of the wind, a lot of energy accumulates that is not used or can be stored , And therefore is wasted.

In the United States, only 790 megawatts of electricity were stored last year, and only 300,000 Megawatts of electricity per year were lost in California from solar and wind power plants because there was no way to store it.

Malta is a secret project by Google that aims to build an electrical plant capable of storing electricity for days. This plant is composed of four deposits, two of them filled with salt, and two others of antifreeze. You can see it in the opening image.

Electricity from renewable sources reaches the plant, which turns it into cold steam and heat. The cold keeps the antifreeze, and the heat is stored by the salt. If both substances are well insulated, they can keep both states for days. When electricity is required, this cold and heat is released and the contrast sets in motion turbines, which generate electricity.

It is the classic principle of thermodynamics, and it is not the first time it is used to store electricity. Google's contribution is that, in their words, they have been able to isolate salt and antifreeze using conventional materials that are not expensive to manufacture, so this power plant that stores electricity could compete in cost with the current based on ion- Lithium, but storage could last longer.

Google already has a prototype running, and ensures that storage facilities can be designed from the size of a garage to that of a power plant. Now it is initiating negotiations to connect a prototype in the real electrical network, and to verify its effectiveness.

There is still a lot left, but as X itself acknowledges, electricity storage could be the key to slowing down climate change and reducing fossil fuel use.