New Energy Wind Blade Energy Storage Battery

Swedish startup Sinonus offers an innovative energy storage solution that could turn giant turbine blades into batteries one day. Not just turbine blades but anything made using carbon fiber could be turned into an energy storage unit thanks to Sinonus' pioneering tech that was researched at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg.

The batteries can be integrated with each wind turbine or installed at the wind farm level, as shown in Figure 1. The techno-economic sizing of wind-storage systems depends largely on cost models of storage and wind-hybrid systems. Such sizing tools go beyond conventional decision -making based on levelized cost of energy-based decision-making.

The model may include objective functions, such as optimizing revenue from co-optimized markets, not just from energy, which is a departure from how energy storage and distributed wind turbines have been traditionally modeled and dispatched. A wind-storage hybrid system mitigates variability by injecting more firm generation into the grid.

This is particularly helpful in high-contribution systems, weak grids, and behind-the-meter systems that have different market drivers. A battery combined with a wind generator can provide a wider range of services than either the battery or the wind generator alone.

However, only a portion of the wind turbine power produced goes into the storage and is thus subject to the losses.

A storage system, such as a Li-ion battery, can help maintain balance of variable wind power output within system constraints, delivering firm power that is easy to integrate with other generators or the grid. The size and use of storage depend on the intended application and the configuration of the wind devices.