Born in war-torn Lebanon, Abe Issa escaped a country in conflict as a young child and ultimately settled in the United States with his family. After securing his degree in finance from Texas Christian University, he established his own real estate investment company in Dallas, Fort Worth. Abe Issa spearheaded the redevelopment of more than 500 Texas residential and commercial properties as head of this firm from 2005 to 2010.
Abe Issa’s history of personal peril and passion for proactive social change subsequently drove him into the green energy sector. Building upon his ventures in the worlds of finance and real estate, he founded EnviroSolar in 2016 where he was CEO until the end of 2019. Abe Issa and his team grew EnviroSolar into a premier provider of solar power solutions to US clients.
To date, Abe Issa has secured his greatest passion in the clean energy sector. As an innovator in the field, he stays up to date with the very latest in promising state-of-the-art energy storage techniques.
Four of the Best Emerging Long-Term Energy Storage Technologies
- Pumped Hydro
When it comes to natural and sustainable energy storage solutions, it is tough to beat one that is driven by water and gravity. First pioneered in the middle of the 20th century, pumped hydro energy storage has been reinvigorated to meet the energy needs of today.
The latent energy in any pumped hydro system comes in the form of stored reservoir water. When more power is needed, the system generates electricity from the downward flow of water from this reservoir to another one that sits at a slightly lower altitude.
After they are constructed, pumped hydro systems maintain extremely inexpensive to operate and store energy in proportions that dwarf even the largest and most technologically advanced batteries in the world. To save money and operate responsibility, today’s emerging pumped hydro sector concentrations on isolated reservoirs that come with less restrictive permitting regulations and won’t disturb river ecosystems.
- Stacked Blocks
Despite their great benefits, pumped hydro systems have serious limitations in terms of both initial construction costs and appropriate site availability. Although they operate on a similar principle by taking advantage of the natural force of gravity, stacked blocks systems offer the promise of more widespread viability, both because they are less expensive to build and because they can be built virtually anywhere.
Defined in the simplest terms, stacked blocks systems store surplus power in the form of 35-metric-ton cubes that are stacked in a monolith-like tower. Like the release of water in the pumped hydro system, the drop of these massive cubes has the potential to generate massive amounts of energy.
- Underground Compressed Air
Between the advent of pumped hydro and the advent of stacked blocks, scientists developed a new technology that uses compressed air as a power storage solution. Placing this compressed air in enormous underground caverns, earlier energy storage facilities of this type opened in Huntorf, Germany in 1978, and in McIntosh, Alabama in 1991.
Underground compressed air energy storage systems use excess electricity to pump compressed air into natural underground formations that act as large storage tanks. The release of this pressurized air can generate equally large amounts of electricity when needed.
Although initial attempts to leverage the latent energy in pressurized gas to produce reserve power have failed to stand the test of time, several new startups are now attempting to improve on the technology. The Canadian company Hydrostor, for example, is developing projects that use existing man-made structures, such as mine shafts, as underground compressed air caverns.
- Liquid Air
Pioneered by the United Kingdom’s Highview Power roughly 15 years ago, liquid air power storage involves using excess electricity to cool air until it concentrates into a liquid form. Highview Power is currently developing multiple full-scale plants that store this supercooled liquid air in massive, pressurized tanks. When it returns to gaseous form, liquid air will release a tremendous amount of energy.
The basic equipment needed to operate a liquid air power storage system (such as compression machinery and power generators) are already widely available and directly applicable to this new purpose. Despite this fact, it is quite revolutionary to employ this equipment to store energy for electricity production.
For Abe Issa, Better Energy Storage Means a Greener World
While fleeing life-threatening circumstances in Lebanon, Abe Issa learned that, in order to survive, one needs to be proactive. Over the past decade, his desire to lead humankind into a safe and secure future has driven him to become a top leader in the world of renewable energy. Knowing just how essential effective energy storage is to sustainable ecology and a healthy environment, he regards the above technologies as important potential contributors to a better and brighter tomorrow.
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