AltEnToday

No matter what our future alternative energy portfolio of the future looks like, there will certainly be a wide range of choices to be made. More than anything else, we need to decide whether we want to depend further on coal, oil, and natural gas, or if we’d rather change our portfolio to include technologies like wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuel more significantly. Personally, I vote for a dramatic increase in renewable non-polluting technology, but there’s a significant problem: intermittent output.

To overcome the chance of clouds on solar or no breeze on a wind farm, an approach that we can take is to deploy batteries and reserve power capabilities that will provide energy and electricity in the event that we don’t have power on tap when we need it. Probably the best proposal I’ve heard so far (besides pumping water up reservoirs during peak energy production to use hydro during non-peak) is distributed hydrogen fuel cells.

Essentially, the technique works like this. You over-build a renewable energy facility - such as a wind farm or a solar panel array. Then, while those are over-producing during peak operation, you process and compress hydrogen in to storage tanks. When the system requires energy, you pass that hydrogen through a fuel cell, oxidized by oxygen, and the result is electricity + H2O (water). The water itself could be purified and actually used as drinking water (or used for watering plants, washing cars, etc).

Already UTC Power has started the process of building new, large-scale fuel cells that will be featured in the new Freedom Tower in New York City. By combining wind-power purchasing rights with on-site fuel cells for supplemental power; the Freedom Tower and new World Trade Center site will be a shining example of alternative energy strategy at work. Expect to see more of this emerge as companies expand their fuel cell capabilities and hydrogen cars become a more viable reality in the future.