This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I Project will investigate a novel thermoelectric loop for stored energy, which would be released later to balance peak demands on electric utility grids. Electric power costs six times more to produce and distribute during peak hours than during full-out production at night. A practical storage means would reduce production costs as well as pollution and defer building new capacity for ten years. Research objectives are to determine if large scale thermoelectric generators, operating with industrial waste heat, can store sufficient energy, at low loss, to satisfy next day's peak demand. Storage experiments and characterization on multi-turn, increasing-scale thermoelectric units will allow performance extrapolations that describe an industrial scale, 60-MWh storage system. Performance curves are expected to predict practical operation of a 60-MWh store for grid leveling. Commercial applications of this research will be a safe, efficient, low-cost, solid-state, distributed means of storing electricity to satisfy daytime peak demands on utility grids.
