PICTURE LEFT: The Bagdad Batteries. This ancient batteries consisted of a clay pot and a metal rod. The batteries were lost in 2004 when Iraq suffered looting as a result of the current war.
Energy storage has been around for thousands of years, with the Egyptians creating batteries. The reason energy storage is so important is because it balances out the times when energy creation is not possible or too expensive. For example if there was a solar plant, it's not much use at night and so we would need to draw on reserves.
In the larger scheme of things, grid energy is often released from sources such as hydro electric dams, which store water and then release it hen needed to meet the consumers demands.
What is interesting is stored fossil fuel energy. Oil, Coal and gas are all called 'post photo-synthate'. In other words, they first store the sun's energy for their own purposes using photosynthesis i.e. splitting water and storing hydrogen. When the plant (coal) or plankton (oil) eventually dies, it gets compressed, mulches down and over millions of years is filtered through sand. Eventually this is turned into oil. Sunlight energy stored as chemical energy!!
This locked up energy is one of the reasons the traditional energy infrastructure is so difficult to shift. It's not just the raw power of oil but also its ability to have all that energy stored.
This locked up energy is one of the reasons the traditional energy infrastructure is so difficult to shift. It's not just the raw power of oil but also its ability to have all that energy stored.
With renewable energy it is quite a different story. There is no lock up of energy. Storage is key. The way forward seems to be hydrogen, but there are numerous other options which need to be considered. Hydrogen will be where we start, as this is the only method which provides clean fuel and does not need polluting chemical.