Google wants storing renewable energy with the help of salt, and yes, you have read that correctly.
Google, main subsidiary company of the American multinational Parent Alphabet. inc specialist in products and services related to the Internet, electronic devices, software and other technologies, and better known still as the search engine of content on the Internet and other services such as gmail, maps, Google + (a social network) and my favorite Google Earth among others he wants to take advantage of the energy that is eventually lost.
Google Parent Alphabet's plan to store renewable energy and otherwise not go to waste is use salt inks and antifreeze, emerging as an alternative to lithium ion batteries.
"Malt" It is the name with which this project has been baptized and it is hoped that it can take advantage of all that energy that somehow ends up being "discarded".
Several examples of this case can be California, Germany and China.
It is estimated that in only the first half of this year, California has wasted more than 300.000 megawatts, these being produced by wind farms and solar panels, as you can see, renewable energy that is wasted because Currently there is still no good way to store this energy.
The data from Germany and China in terms of wasted wind energy is 4% in the case of Germany and 17% in China in just 2015.
Malta
That said, I will go on to explain to Malta, the project to store renewable energy.
And it is that the system in which Google is working is nothing more than power absorb energy in the form of electricity to later convert it into streams of hot and cold air.
The hot air stream makes the salt heat while the cold air stream is responsible for cooling the antifreeze.
Since the salt maintains its temperature, the system will be able to store that energy for hours and even days.
In addition, expected that this year I know store around 790 megawatts of energy with the expected anticipation of having a global capacity that can reach the 45 gigawatts in the next 7 years.
Will they get it? I hope that since it would be an interesting storage system and today what we lack is that, to be able to efficiently store the renewable energy produced.
It is useless to have a solar panel with a 75% yield if we can only store 20% (Note, these percentages are a mere estimate to give you an example)
Employee X
Google, through its "Special laboratory X", a secret laboratory, or so some say although it is no longer so secret, they are dedicated to solving global problems in an unconventional way, that is, use innovation to fix issues that concern millions of people.
In fact, one of the requirements for a Google X project to be approved is that it references a problem that millions of people have.
Another one is that it can use current technology or, at least, achievable in the short term. In addition, it is essential that innovation is used, in such a way that it seems that we are talking about science fiction.
It is for this very reason that laboratory X has considered use salt to store renewable energy.
The system they are betting on (Malta) already has various advantages and is that has the potential to last longer that lithium ion batteries, as I mentioned above want me to be the alternative to these batteries, can be located anywhere and is also capable of compete on price with some renewable energy storage methods and with hydroelectric plants, at least the newest ones, according to scientists and executives already working on the project.
In fact, the director of the Moonshot Factory, Obin Felten has pointed out “If we start to solve a major problem like climate change, there are trillions and trillions of dollars at stake. It is a market opportunity "