SYDNEY:With new prime minister Kevin Rudd having just signed Australia up to the Kyoto Protocol, news of another recent Australian innovation has slipped by almost unnoticed.
The first hybrid battery suitable for electricity storage from renewable sources such as wind and solar power is now a step closer.
Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and venture capitalist Cleantech Ventures have invested heavily in a company called Smart Storage to accelerate development of its battery technology.
Smart Storage says it has a solution to the old problem with renewable energy technologies: what do you do when the wind stops blowing and the sun sets? The answer is a battery based on those used in hybrid cars.
CSIRO scientists are hopeful the battery will eventually be used in homes to store power from renewable energy sources.
Current battery storage solutions from renewable sources are unreliable and unable to meet high power demands. They are also considered expensive due to high initial cost and short battery life.
CSIRO director Dr John Wright said the Smart Storage technology aims to deliver a low cost, high performance, high power battery, suitable for both grid-connected and remote applications.
"Cost effective, high performance energy storage has been the missing link for renewable energy.
"The Smart Storage technology is based on CSIRO's 'Ultrabattery' which has been successfully trialled in hybrid vehicles.
"We've broken out from that and said, 'Well, this is going to be so robust that we could use it for renewable energy storage'. We can see a day when people are installing these devices in their own home," he said.
Dr Wright says the new technology can handle rapid power fluctuations without degrading its storage capability.
"We think this combination battery is really a step towards the future and we're setting it up on one of our own wind turbines ... to really give it a full scale work out."
Those involved are being understandably shy about releasing too much detail, but claim that using unnamed "advanced materials" means the discharge and charge power of the battery will be 50 per cent higher and cycle life at least three times longer than conventional battery types.
Andrew Pickering of Cleantech Ventures - whose latest report is called Turning Green into Gold - says the technology development is directed towards manufacturing in existing lead-acid battery plants. " Too often new technologies simply aren't affordable and that significantly retards market uptake," he said.
"Investments in energy storage technologies have excellent potential for strong returns given the growing market demand and the lack of viable solutions. We now have investments in two energy storage technology companies, V-Fuel which targets grid-scale renewable energy storage applications and now Smart Storage for smaller renewable energy systems."
