World’s smallest Pelton turbine opens up home energy storage
The Ground-Level Integrated Diverse Energy Storage, or GLIDES, stores electricity mechanically in the form of compressed gas that displaces water in high-pressure vessels described by co-inventor Wale Odukomaiya as the heart of the system. The GLIDES system overcomes the site limitations of pumped storage hydroelectricity and compressed air energy, and the higher cost of batteries, by making use of waste heat from a bulding to produce more energy.
Compared to these conventional energy storage systems, GLIDES also features near constant-temperature processes, higher efficiency and more flexible scalability. In addition, the system uses the world’s smallest Pelton turbine, which extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, manufactured at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility.
A Pelton wheel uses jets of water into buckets to create the motion that both generates the electricity and drive the pump to store water at quiet times. The 3D printed buckets measure just 6mm in width to capture a jet 1.5mm in diameter and in volume would be produced with simple casting at low cost. The energy density depends on many parameters but the researchers say they can make anything between 3 and 10 MJ/M3. The initial prototype generates 1.2kW from two jets, although the turbine can support up to seven jets. The researchers have applied for a US patent on the technology and believe this can be practical for home and commercial use.
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