Batteries are seizing new ground. There’s no question about that. Lithium-ion batteries are center-stage for now, despite being dangerous in the wrong hands. But let’s think bigger. Let’s think about batteries generally, and how portable energy is changing our lives.
Battery Energy is Seizing New Ground
Without batteries, we would have to plug our electronic devices into wall sockets for them to work. Think about that before you read on. How dramatic is this for the batteries we purchase in stores?
Battery progress was going along smoothly until someone invented the electric car. Who could have imagined an electrical device as large as that! Portable electricity gained new meaning, when we imagined it traveling at 100 miles per hour.
For a while it seemed as if electric car sales would take off equally fast. Well they are doing so in China, but not in America for reasons we won’t go into here. The American slump created a surplus in battery manufacturing, where factories were preparing for exponential demand.
However help was at at hand, thanks to batteries seizing new ground in the electricity utility business. Electricity demand fluctuates with morning and evening peaks. Peaking gas generators traditionally fill that gap, although they cause atmospheric pollution.
Batteries Are Muscling Into Electricity Distribution
There was the moment in time when the world seized on a new idea. This idea was that we no longer needed to generate electricity for immediate consumption. We could now store it in the more powerful batteries that electric cars had inspired. And we could source that electricity from the wind and the sun!
This was literally a ‘marriage made in heaven’. Energy from the sun and the wind fades away in the evening, and takes a while to get going in the morning. Although this energy is far better for our environment than gas peaking stations, and becoming cheaper too.
Batteries are seizing new ground because they offer a better, cheaper solution, that can store wind and solar energy until we need it. The proof of energy storage is springing up everywhere in the form of solar, wind, and now battery farms. None of this would be practical without the ‘small miracle’ of batteries.
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400MW Battery Storage Project In Germany
