Xtreme Power: A Super-Battery For Hawaiian Wind Farms
By Jeff St. John in Earth2Tech, March 9 2010
Xtreme Power has been pulling the veil away from its decades-old energy storage technology over the past six months or so, getting attention for claims of a “chemical capacitor” that can beat lithium ion batteries in terms of energy storage, efficiency, cycle life and cost. Now the Kyle, Texas-based startup has a big contract to test its technology: a 10-megawatt storage system meant to back up a 30-megawatt wind farm planned for the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
The developer of the project, First Wind, just got a $117 million Department of Energy loan guarantee for the project, and Xtreme Power says it will be managing not only its battery, but the entire wind farm’s output via a home-built smart grid network.
