We can recreate retired coal plants to produce green energy

Dozens of retired coal-fired power plants can find a new life that provides a backup or emergency power for the electric grid-except the then foothold fuel. They can instead rely on the heat stored in the dirt.

This concept involves making a huge dirt pile near the coal plant and keeping the industrial heater inside. During the low demand periods of the grid, these machines will convert cheap electricity to heat, which will be stored inside the dirt at a temperature of about 600 ° C. During high power demand hours, heat can be transmitted out of dirt through hot liquid pipes.

The coal plant turbine blade and connected generator can then turn this heat into backup energy. The heat will turn the water into steam, which will rotate the turbine blade to generate electricity. “Instead of taking coal to heat the water to produce steam, you use this energy -stocked heat,” says Ken Caldira at Stanford University in California.

Such energy storage is essential for renewable power sources, such as air and solar energy, which only provide energy energy. And dirt is available cheaper, more abundant and more widely available, which is more widely available than other types of long -term energy storage, such as lithium batteries or hydrogen fuel.

“The really exciting part is especially low energy capacity costs, as it is much cheaper than other energy technologies,” says Eliasia Wangal at Stanford University.

However, this approach may have other costs. “Such systems must reduce piping and electricity costs and this can be a challenge,” says Andrew Maxon of the Electric Power Research Institute, an unprofessional research organization in California.

In the standard thermal in Oklahoma, Austin Vernon says most of the dirt contains naturally heat -avoiding materials, such as silicon dioxide and aluminum oxide, which make it “very stronger than the heating system”. It starts to commerce retired coal power plants, especially at nearby solar or air power sources, to restore retired coal power plants to commercialize this “hat battery” technology.

In the United States, such retired coal facilities are sufficient-about 300 300 coal-fired plants have been retired between only 2010 and 2019, and an additional 50-year-old 50-year-old is expected to reach a normal retirement age by 2030. Although the Trump administration has tried to delay the retirement of the Quet Plant, which in the late 2000s has increased US power generation due to quail.

Christian Fong, a research organization located in Colorado, is hopeful about the idea of giving a new purpose to the Christian Fong, defective coal plants. “It provides a way to provide employment to local communities and contribute to a clean energy transfer to help displace the coal plant retirement by providing employment to local communities.”