Forcing A Breakthrough In Energy Storage: An Interview With Dr. Steve Griffiths
Summary
With flow batteries, you have tanks of electrolytes that run through cells with positive and negative electrodes and a membrane and allow for an ion exchange to occur in order to generate electricity. So in short we can have flow batteries that are working with very cheap electrolytes, or any other technology in which you don’t use expensive metals or commodities and can achieve sufficient energy density for scalability. The demand side approaches, like load shifting and profile shaping, are based on the integration of sensor data and software that interacts with hardware for action. So I think smart systems for demand management is an area that needs to be pursued pretty aggressively in parallel to the growth in new hardware and software capabilities. From there, I think the storage question, being able to store energy at very low cost and then dispatch it or shift it over long timescales, is important for achieving very high shares of renewables in electricity.