Electric Utility Level Storage

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Following up on our introduction to the grid podcast, Garry Golden and I invited Dr. Jeremy Meyers to talk about ideas for utility level storage. Jeremy is a professor at UT with an expertise in electrochemistry. We talk about the near term future holds for electricity storage at the utility level, which can be an important capability when integrating renewables into the grid. Because wind farms only produce energywhen the wind is blowing and solar cells only produce energy when the sun is shining, storing energy for the down times allows the renewable energy farms to reliably deliver energy as needed, when needed.

We zero in on flow batteries. And because of the Austin reference, no discussion on energy storage is complete without a question about eestor.

New to the Grid?  You may want to listen to Tech2Energy’s The Grid 101, first.

Links:
Dr. Jeremy Myers, UT
Flow batteries
eestor

The image is of Napolean and Volta, the inventor of the battery, with his “Volta Pile.”  Little progress has been made in utility level storage since that time.