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Michigan-based Sesame Solar has created what it calls “the world’s first 100-percent renewably powered mobile nanogrid” in sizes from 10 feet long to 40-foot shipping container.
The boxy trailers can be hauled by anything from pickup trucks to helicopters to natural disaster sites, temporary off-grid operations, or similar places, be set up in as little as 15 minutes by one person, and deliver power for as long as several weeks without attention.
Once the trailer is settled, its walls of solar panels open out from the trailer’s sides and hinge up to face the sky to charge its onboard batteries with anywhere from 15 to 150 kilowatt-hours of power.
An onboard electrolyzer uses some of that solar power to split water molecules to harvest hydrogen, which is stored in pressurized tanks outside the trailer.
When the battery’s charge falls below 35 percent, a fuel cell automatically draws on the hydrogen reserve to make electricity to recharge the batteries, at which point the fuel cell shuts itself off.
Small wind turbines can be added as an auxiliary power source.
Each nanogrid has office space inside that can be used as a management or command center. If needed, the space can be rigged out as a small medical clinic.
Sesame’s mobile grids have been used by nonprofit organizations, telecommunications companies, and the U.S. Air Force.
One of the company’s mobile power stations was used as a medical treatment facility in the wake of Hurricane Maria that ravaged the Caribbean region and Puerto Rico in September 2017.
TRENDPOST: Disaster response units, military deployments, refugee camps, and remote medical clinics are only a few of the users that will take advantage of mobile power plants that don’t need to worry about connecting to a grid or maintaining a supply line for fuel trucks.
By the end of the decade, these power plants on wheels should become common among emergency response agencies, armed forces, natural resource companies, and those with similar mobile power needs.
One of Sesame Solar’s nanogrid power units.
Credit: Sesame Solar
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