Post #9 (May 29th 2018)
May 29th, 2018
Yesterday was Memorial Day, so today was the first day this week I went to the First Solar headquarters. Today I spent most of the day with Arjun, an engineer for First Solar who mainly specializes in battery storage. Funny enough, Arjun's is from the same city in India that my family is from. There was a lot of information, numbers, and graphs that I had to digest about battery storage, but I definitely got the gist of what the battery storage team does. Additionally, I also gained an understanding of why they do what they do. So in a traditional plant or storage unit, there's a 24-hour cycle. Throughout the day different amounts and ratios of different types of energy are produced and used. Because the sun is at its peak in the middle of the day, solar energy is usually consumed during the middle of the day. So traditionally, you're going to use fossil fuels (coal) at the beginning and end of the day, but in the middle, you can use predominantly use energy accessed via the solar panels. This, of course, means because there's less supply during the night traditionally, the demand is driven up. So if there was some way that you could use solar energy during the early day and late night, you could raise the price. Not only is it good for the environment, but capitalizing on those hours would also be a good decision. The way to do this is battery storage. If you hook up a battery to the panels, you can begin to store the excess energy captured during the middle of the day and access it during other parts of the day. Which essentially means with new technology, you can now run solar energy the entire day. The main question I had as he was explaining this was as follows: "Why is this a new thing?" Obviously, batteries have been around for a while, and this seems like a pretty straightforward idea. His response helped clarify a lot. Batteries are cheaper to access than ever making this a financially viable option. It's not so much that there's some advanced new technology they're using, but rather there seeing a hole in the market that they can take advantage of. He then showed me a lot of examples of accessing the excess energy and using solar energy during parts of the day where you simply couldn't before. First Solar is one of the only companies to produce plants that have battery storage, so it's easy to see why they are one of the more competitive companies in the industry. I was very impressed and informed after hearing Arjun talk.
Yesterday was Memorial Day, so today was the first day this week I went to the First Solar headquarters. Today I spent most of the day with Arjun, an engineer for First Solar who mainly specializes in battery storage. Funny enough, Arjun's is from the same city in India that my family is from. There was a lot of information, numbers, and graphs that I had to digest about battery storage, but I definitely got the gist of what the battery storage team does. Additionally, I also gained an understanding of why they do what they do. So in a traditional plant or storage unit, there's a 24-hour cycle. Throughout the day different amounts and ratios of different types of energy are produced and used. Because the sun is at its peak in the middle of the day, solar energy is usually consumed during the middle of the day. So traditionally, you're going to use fossil fuels (coal) at the beginning and end of the day, but in the middle, you can use predominantly use energy accessed via the solar panels. This, of course, means because there's less supply during the night traditionally, the demand is driven up. So if there was some way that you could use solar energy during the early day and late night, you could raise the price. Not only is it good for the environment, but capitalizing on those hours would also be a good decision. The way to do this is battery storage. If you hook up a battery to the panels, you can begin to store the excess energy captured during the middle of the day and access it during other parts of the day. Which essentially means with new technology, you can now run solar energy the entire day. The main question I had as he was explaining this was as follows: "Why is this a new thing?" Obviously, batteries have been around for a while, and this seems like a pretty straightforward idea. His response helped clarify a lot. Batteries are cheaper to access than ever making this a financially viable option. It's not so much that there's some advanced new technology they're using, but rather there seeing a hole in the market that they can take advantage of. He then showed me a lot of examples of accessing the excess energy and using solar energy during parts of the day where you simply couldn't before. First Solar is one of the only companies to produce plants that have battery storage, so it's easy to see why they are one of the more competitive companies in the industry. I was very impressed and informed after hearing Arjun talk.
Comments
Post a Comment