Published

2 years ago

February 29, 2024

Alice Rush

BayWa r.e. and Ampt have deployed a combination of wind and solar generation together with battery storage within the microgrid at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT) campus in Pfinztal, Germany.

BayWa r.e. installed three rooftop arrays and one ground-mounted system with a total capacity of 690 kWp to expand onsite energy utilization. The systems are connected to the power grid without their own inverters, but instead through an existing 2 MW wind turbine. A 10 MWh flow BESS is part of the system as well.

Leveraging Ampt String Optimizers, each of the different technologies was integrated through a shared DC bus, says the company, adding that this way, generation variability across the PV systems can be managed and the different systems united at a high and fixed voltage.

Ampt String Optimizers are DC/DC converters that perform maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and recover energy losses due to voltage and technology differences, according to BayWa r.e. Through individual string MPPT, Ampt optimizers mitigate the energy losses caused by shade from surrounding buildings on the Fraunhofer ICT campus. The optimizers are programmable and provide string-level data, enhancing visibility of the system functions as well as operation and maintenance capabilities.

“We are delighted to bring this milestone project to life. Ampt’s technology simplified a technically very complex project,” says BayWa r.e.’s Andrea Grotzke. “The way we have added solar to the existing wind energy and battery storage system is unique, and in successfully completing this project we were able to further improve our own expertise and capabilities. We are pleased with the result of this innovative power solution symbiosis and our ability to meet our customer’s individual requirements.”

The post BayWa r.e., Ampt, Fraunhofer ICT Deploy Energy Storage Combination System appeared first on Solar Industry.

BayWa, Ampt, Fraunhofer ICT Deploy Energy Storage Combination System

Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Concepts Can’t Violate the Laws of Physics

Published

15 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

In the early days of 2GreenEnergy, my people and I were vigorously engaged in finding solid ideas in cleantech that needed funding in order to move forward.

I vividly remember a conversation with a guy in Maryland who was trying to explain the (ostensible) breakthrough that he and his team had made in hydrokinetics. When I was having trouble visualizing what we was talking about, he asked me to “think of it as a river in a box.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You mean you take a box full of standing water, add energy to it get it moving, then extract that energy, leaving you with more energy that you added to it.”

“Exactly.”

I politely explained that the laws of physics, specifically the first and second laws of thermodynamics, make this impossible.

He wasn’t through, however, and insisted that, in his office, his people had constructed a “working model.”

Here’s where my tone descended into something less than 100% polite. I told him that he may think he has a working model, but he’s wrong; if he believes this, he’s ignorant; if he doesn’t, but is conducting this conversation anyway, he’s a fraud.

“But don’t you want to come see it?” he implored.

“No. Not only would not fly across the country to see whatever it is you claim to have built, I wouldn’t walk across the street to a “working model” of something that is theoretically impossible.”

—

I tell this story because the claim made at the upper left is essentially identical. You’re pumping water up out of a stream, and then claiming to extract more energy when the water flows back into the stream.

Of course, social media today is rife with complete crap like this. We’ve devolved to a point where defrauding money out of idiots is rapidly replacing baseball as our national pastime.