Electricity Revolution, the Faraday Grid

After Ygdrasyl, here we are with the presentation of the second interesting project that will take part in the Energy Close-up Engineering Column #StartUp4Energy. In this section I will put together technical and economical technologies in which everyone, if we want, can invest through CrowdFunding webites, joining the worthy Startup projects from all over the world.

Traditional fossil fuels, nuclear and even hydro power are all synchronous generators which create inertia to help maintain this frequency; new generation from wind and solar is asynchronous and does not have the same inertia, making frequency response difficult. Due to its volatility there is a limit to the amount of this type of energy we can integrate to grids without causing significant instability. Injection of power throughout the grid from renewables can lead to localized voltage and frequency issues. Current grids cannot adequately compensate and are not able to distribute the power elsewhere in the network to be used where it is needed.

Today I present you the Australian Start-up who solved this problem with their own technology: the so-called Faraday Exchanger, part of the project the Faraday Grid. They have designed a hardware device that replaces transformers in existing electricity grids and enables the more volatile and distributed energy sources to generate and dispatch electricity without disrupting the operation of the grid in delivering electricity to the users. The benefits of the Faraday Exchanger are greater integration of renewable energy sources, greater network efficiency and reduction of loss between points and potential for peer to peer energy sharing.

A Faraday Exchanger is intended to be one of many throughout an electricity network to manage and balance the volatility of e.g. solar and wind energy sources. When distributed throughout a grid, the ‘Faraday Grid’ will act to provide the inertial response and primary frequency response to maintain stability. The Faraday Exchanger utilizes all the existing poles and wires in our grid and it also removes the need for additional expensive equipment or systems, which makes the grid more fragile.

If you want you can check the YouTube Channel out. You can invest in this idea from the Indiegogo portal. And we all hope that they will raise as much money as they need, 250.000 $. We will wait for the prototype in order to write another article, in November 2016.