59°F
weather icon Clear

Letter to the Editor, April 11

Thermal batteries boon for solar energy users

Thermal energy battery could smooth power supply from Boulder City’s solar farms

I have added the newly launched Australian thermal energy battery to my “Gallery of Clean Energy Inventions” exhibit (http://commutefaster.com/vesperman.html), which could smooth the power supply from Boulder City’s solar farms. The text from the exhibit is as follows:

A thermal energy battery can store six times more energy than lithium-ion batteries per volume for 60-80 percent of the price. A TEB stores electrical energy as thermal energy by heating and melting a unique phase-change material, before being extracted by a heat engine to provide electricity when, and where it’s needed. The TEB is a modular energy storage unit that accepts any kind of electricity — solar, wind, fossil fuel-generated or straight off the grid — and uses it to heat up and melt silicon in a heavily insulated chamber. A standard TEB box holds 1.2 megawatt-hours of energy, with all input and output electronics on board, and fits easily into a 20-foot (6-meter) container. Installations can scale from 5-kilowatt applications out to a virtually unlimited size. In the case of an outage, each TEB can remain active for about 48 hours. A TEB can also charge and discharge at the same time.

The Gallery of Clean Energy Inventions exhibits profiles of 19 larger generators, 34 smaller generators, 25 advanced self-powered electric vehicle innovations, 29 radioactivity neutralization methods, 27 space travel innovations, 20 technical solutions to water shortages, and a torsion field school network. The exhibit also includes 40 movie posters and 78 colorful Hubble Space Telescope images.

Gary Vesperman

MOST READ
LISTEN TO THE TOP FIVE HERE
THE LATEST
Bursting our bewitched bubble

It’s that dreaded time of year again. Monstrous in magnitude. A mysterious ritual. Strange, scary, sinister, and spooky. Macabre and menacing. Dark and gloomy. Dastardly and disturbing. Gruesome and ghoulish. Frightful. Creepy. Petrifying. Even eerie. A wicked, morbid tradition that haunts our city annually.

Mayor’s Corner: Helmets save lives

Emergency personnel in Clark County estimate they respond to four accidents each day involving bikes, e-bikes, or e-scooters. A few of these accidents have involved fatalities of minors — a grim reminder of the dangers of these devices when not used responsibly. Our goal as city leaders is to prevent tragedies from occurring. Any loss of life has a dramatic impact on families, loved ones, friends, as well as on the entire community.

Cheers to 40 years in the biz

I thought I’d talk a little about the newspaper business on the heels of the Review winning seven statewide awards the other night in Fallon.

AI is here. Just ask your neighbors

“I’ve done 10 albums in the past year,” my across-the-street neighbor, Dietmar, told me Sunday morning as we stood in the street between our two houses catching up. He added that his wife, Sarah, had put out two collections of songs in the same time period, adding, “You know it’s all AI, right?”

Astronaut lands in Nevada, so to speak

I wish to begin by noting that when it comes to politics, I am registered nonpartisan. So when writing about Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, I’m focusing (well, for the most part), on his role as a retired NASA astronaut, not as a politician.

The patriot way

Today is Patriot Day, a day most of us refer to as 9/11. In the U.S., Patriot Day occurs annually on Sept. 11 in memory of the victims who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Program helps homebuyers in Boulder City

Owning a home is part of the American Dream. Unfortunately, the steep rise in rental rates and increasing costs for goods and services have left many home buyers struggling to save enough for a down payment.