It’s the objection to renewable energy that somehow won’t go away: that the wind drops and the sun goes down. For help making the point that energy can be stored from day to night, or for when the air is still, the New York Times has prepared an eye-catching set of animated infographics explaining several leading-edge non-lithium-based concepts that are helping to drive down the cost of energy storage.
The paper’s animations tackle compressed air, molten salt, spinning flywheels, and “a train laden with rubble,” explaining how each can store and release electricity originally generated by wind turbines and solar panels to deliver grid-quality reliability of service, 24 hours a day.
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A contract recently signed in Tucson, Arizona demonstrated that the combination of solar plus electrical storage can already deliver dispatchable (on-demand) power at a grid-competitive price of less than US$0.03 per kilowatt-hour.
