Batteries

Big plants are steady, but they're not very flexible. Generally, to power something, you have these huge base load gas plants. And these are running kind of all the time no matter what, and they're pretty slow, and you can't really adjust how much energy they're creating. When demand is too low, these big slow plants actually lose money. And when demand is too high, quicker, dirtier plants called peaker plants have to switch on to keep up. And they're pretty wasteful. So you kind of get dinged on both sides. You get dinged when you don't have enough load and then when you have too much, you also get dinged inefficiently. So, traditional plants aren't super efficient, but they're consistent and therefore predictable. Renewable energy can be another story. Solar and wind power is cheap and clean and plentiful, but only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. So, inconsistency is the big worry, that, you know, it'll be a cloudy day or it'll be a still day and then all of the sudden, your appliances won't work, and that's something that no one really wants. What makes batteries so promising is that they can solve all of these problems. When paired with big power plants, they can supply energy during peak times without polluting the way that peaker plants do And when paired with renewables, they can jump in when clouds roll over a solar farm. Energy storage really is the missing piece of the puzzle for renewable energy. But when we say storage, we don't just necessarily mean these. On a super broad level, a battery is like a bank for energy. You deposit energy into it when you don't need it, and withdraw it when you do. We use electrical energy on the grid, but we can store it as any kind of energy.