The four-megawatt sodium-sulfur (NaS) battery system consists of 80 modules, 8,000 pounds (3,600 kilograms) each, constructed by the Japanese firm NGK-Locke. They were shipped to Long Beach, California, in December and transported to Texas aboard 24 trucks.
Presidio, Texas is isolated and dependent on a single transmission line for its electricity. Conditions are such that outages and interruptions are common. Solution: build a really big UPS. I'm willing to bet that the electrical engineers are having a grand time. "Heck with that virtual stuff, we're going analog and we're goin' big. You guys with the six cell flashlights got nothin." Maybe, if this proves to be a working solution, America might consider building (manufacturing) things at home. Or maybe we'll be content to let our financial engineers make paper money while we invent more facebook apps.
