DailyDirt: Storing Lots Of Energy

The obvious challenge with renewable energy sources like solar and wind is: what do you do when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing? Solar and wind generators don't tend to produce electricity in convenient amounts whenever we want, leading to wasted resources and further reliance on fossil fuel generators to keep up with electricity demand cycles. Storing lots of energy in an efficient way that can be readily recovered isn't easy, but there are some solutions that could work.

• It sounds like a made-up high school physics problem, but there's a startup called ARES (Advanced Rail Energy Storage) that wants to store energy by pushing heavy trains up a hill. When the energy is needed, the trains would roll back down the hill and generate electricity doing so. The rail system takes up a bit of space, but its backers compare it to a hydroelectric dam -- but without the water and with less environmental impact. [url]
• The Llyn Peris reservoir has a hydroelectric generator with a peak output of 1.728 GW (great, Scott!). This storage station supplements Britain's national grid, but it could power the city of Wales on its own for about 5.5 hours. [url]
• Storing energy in chemical batteries doesn't sound quite as simple, but batteries take up a lot less space. Big cheap batteries for grid storage could use molten metal salts, but the technology still needs a bit more work before scaling up. [url]

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