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California utility augments 1,800 air conditioning units with “ice battery”
A Santa Barbara-based company called Ice Energy has partnered with NRG Energy to deliver 1,800 “ice batteries” to commercial and industrial buildings served by electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE). The units are expected to reduce air conditioning bills by up to 40 percent and eliminate 200,000 tons of CO2 over the next 20 years.
Ice Energy has been building ice-based cooling systems since the early 2000s. Much like pumped storage or compressed air “batteries,” Ice Energy essentially stores electricity by drawing power from the grid at non-peak times to freeze water in a special container. Then at peak times, when the cost of electricity is high and grid operators are struggling to keep up with demand, Ice Energy’s systems kick in and use that block of ice to cool the space that the air conditioning unit normally serves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 10 2017, @11:20PM
since 1996, I see that 22.965 GW of capacity have been approved and constructed in that period
I did say the situation had improved somewhat.
I see a similarity to the possibility that these IceBear units could obviate the construction of power plants.
But that shouldn't be the reason IceBear units are developed. After all, if reducing electricity supply is your only goal then the obvious solution is to supply nothing.
If, because of conservation, a poor person purchases, for example, less electricity, that person has spent less money. That money can be used for other purposes.
And if because of conservation, a poor person either ends up spending more money or otherwise has a reduced standard of living, which incidentally, I consider a more likely outcome, then it's not so good for that poor person. I don't believe that conservation efforts have ever furthered the well being of poor people. Instead, it's just another cost pushed on them.
You see a tragedy of the commons pertaining to water; I see one pertaining to fossil fuels. If the latter could somehow be burned without resulting in global warming and pollution, they are nonetheless finite--and we're using them far faster than they are being formed.
We can stop using fossil fuels when they become too expensive relative to the alternatives (that is, are "used up" for purposes of generating energy). This situation doesn't need to last forever, it just needs to help us now when we really need it. The pollution argument has modest traction, but the argument that we're using up a resource that somehow will be more valuable in the future, is not.
I didn't expect you to agree with the report. However, perhaps you see the possibility that the state's government may take the report seriously.
I do indeed see the possibility. I don't respect it nor believe, even if sincere, that the rest of us should share their delusions as a result.