Energy Storage — Soon To Become Cost-Effective

In response to my recent post on Storage Week, the energy storage conference that I try to catch each year, a longtime 2GreenEnergy reader from the Middle East writes:

Hi Craig!  I admire your persistence. The concept has been in discussions under a different context since around April 1989.  I have attached this for your convenience. Wish you a successful meeting.

Thanks for the kind words.  Re: your comment about my persistence, I have to laugh.  I’m not going away anytime soon, absent getting hit by a bus or something else unforeseen, that is. 

You’re 100% correct that the concept of energy storage is not a new one. One could argue that the concept goes back to candles, albeit on a micro scale.  And, of course, anyone is free to postulate ideas about utility-scale storage, like the people you mention here with their enormous volumes of lead-acid batteries.  The issue of course, then as now, is cost.  Getting the cost of large-scale energy storage down to a viable level is, for the first time in history, right around the corner.

For my money, the people with the best chance to make this happen are the zinc-air battery chemists, noted on our list of clean energy investment opportunities. 

Again, I appreciate your thinking of me.