Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Major energy storage discovery makes solar more achievable?

Update : Oil Drum sceptical

2 comments:

BillSeitz said...

I think that at least for stationary locations, it makes more sense to send excess energy back up into the grid, rather than storing it locally.

Composing said...

Bill, that would be OK if everyone on the grid was producing energy at different times, so availability and demand evened-out.

But with solar, unless the grid is *very* big, most users will be getting more or less the same sun at the same time. So they'll all have spare to put into it during the day, and want to take out at night.

Then it's a question of which is the more energy-efficient storage mechanism : lots of local fuel cells or a big central storage.