Storage Is The Challenge To Renewable Energy
The key piece of the puzzle missing from the present picture that could dramatically advance the use of renewable energy is economical energy storage.
The phenomenon of the world’s so-called addiction to fossil fuels is actually an aspect of a greater underlying energy truth. What society really wants and needs is energy on demand.
What will enable renewables to assume the lion’s share of society’s energy generation portfolio is making that energy available wherever and whenever it is needed. Transforming the energy situation so that renewables provide the majority of the world’s usable power requires one essential missing element: Energy Storage.
What we urgently need is a means of storing energy at large scale and low cost that can be adapted anywhere. And it’s important not to confuse lightweight mobile energy storage with large scale stationary storage.
Our present fixation with energy generation ignores the “time value of energy.” Instead of concentrating all of our efforts on generation we need to pay increased attention to energy storage. Only after the cost of generation and storage of renewable energy matches the cost of on-demand generation from fossil, nuclear and hydro will we see a transformation of the energy industry.
If you want to know more about this and other topics directly from end users of energy storage technologies join us at one of these annual events: The Energy Storage World Forum (Grid Scale Applications), or The Residential Energy Storage Forum, or one of our Training Courses.
