TECH

Salt as a solution to store renewable energy
Through the Malta Project, which you can learn about here, it has been discovered that salt can be the solution for storing renewable energy on a large scale. For this purpose, the molten salts will be used.
Remember that for thousands of years salt has many uses, and the main use is to conserve and store food. In the last decade the potential of how to use it to store energy has been identified.
This adventure began with the Malta Project, which, meanwhile, got partners to bring this research to life, being now an independent company called Malta Inc!
And how can Salt store energy?
New sources of renewable energy generation
You may not know it, but it is cheaper to develop new sources of renewable energy than to continue to invest in fossil fuels. Even because these are limited, while renewable energy is not.
However, the problem remains in the storage of these renewable energies. Although easy to generate, storage remains difficult and expensive. This is one of the major obstacles to the implementation of renewable energy in the market!
How to use salt to store energy?
The idea behind the Malta Project is to store energy in the form of heat in molten salts at high temperature and then stored in the cold, bathed in a low-density liquid for days or weeks until it is necessary to use the same energy !
For the development of this project, we use accessible and inexpensive materials such as salt, steel, antifreeze and air. This is a new approach to engineering to change the time of energy when it is produced, until it is needed.
The fact is that if wind farms and solar parks produce more energy than electricity, then the energy is eventually wasted. There are countries, like California, and that 30% of the solar energy generated is not used after it is produced!
Worse ... is that we have a greater energy need during periods when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow. That is, during night periods ... this causes suppliers to have to connect the "state-of-the-art facilities" to meet the energy needs of the population.
But these "state-of-the-art facilities" run on fossil fuels, and also emit large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere when compared to common power plants. And that's where it's important to have consistent, reliable storage systems for the energy generated by renewable sources!
Is that by taking advantage of the excess energy generated by renewable sources, we will reduce CO2 emissions and save on fossil fuels! Google invests in Project Malta
After looking for partners, having developed the project and having several business groups, with pilot projects, launched the first megawatt scale pilot plant, and for this it had the precious collaboration of Google through Alphabet Inc.
This is part of Google X, a subsidiary dedicated to research and development of technologies!
In addition, the company continues to investigate how to use technology to reduce carbon emissions. For this it counts on the support of past and present partnerships, like Fog Horn, Dandelion and Makani. Using greener new modes of freight can make a difference, like the Wing or Waymo. Renewable Energy Magazine