The promise is intriguing.  Current power in terms of infrastructure is crude – it’s a simple in-out system.  If power leveling technologies were modestly adopted it could make the power grid equivalent of RAM, able to handle varying demand without crashes (brownouts).  In time, serious power storage adoption could equate to long-term storage driving down prices during times of peak consumption or high commodity prices, similar to a hard drive, to use the computer analogy again.

Another key advantage of the technology is its ability to make wind and solar power technology -- variable sources -- make more sense from an economic standpoint fueled by the demand for continuous power.  These points were among the thoughts aired at a recent industry expert’s panel meeting for the New England Clean Energy Council.  The council, which is intimately knowledgeable with consumer power industry, says that power storage technologies have tremendous potential, but are held back by tech risks and expenses.

The council hopes that nonetheless the technologies will slowly be adopted.  This way "peak shaving", using stored energy to offset demand peaks during the day, can be employed as an alternative to having to build more power plants.  However, much work must be done to transform the grid to make such practices commonplace.

Says Ric Fulop, co-founder and vice president of business development at lithium-ion battery company A123 Systems, which is among the companies focusing on storage technologies, "Buying power at night and then selling it during the day--something like that will happen maybe in 30 or 40 years when storage technologies are one-tenth the costs they are today.  I think we will see a lot of deployments in the next few years that will change how the grid works.  Then we'll see utilities jump on the bandwagon."

Fulop has a dedicated team of over 100 engineers working on the problem.  While his business focuses primarily on power tool batteries and plug-in hybrid batteries, the grid storage division is growing.

The need for grid storage is becoming alarmingly clear.  In an area of Texas supplied mostly by wind power a Texas utility earlier this year had to cut customers off of power, according to Lawrence Gelbien, vice president of technology at utility NStar.  Says Gelbien, "If you could take the wind power, store it in batteries, and discharge when the wind starts again, then that's a fine application of storage."

Currently, the grid storage industry is valued at $2.4B USD per year and is growing 3.3 percent per year.  Key technologies include exotic battery chemistries, ultracapacitors, and flywheels.  However, all these technologies are mainly for storage time of less than an hour.  The long term storage market is even wider open and may use technologies as wild as "flow batteries" and compressed air storage.  A ten percent adoption of long term storage by wind power plants could generate a $50B USD market, according to analysts.

Compressed Air Energy Storeage (CAES) typically involves pumping air underground to store energy and later releasing it.  Currently two such plants are in operation, but many more companies are considering them.  General Compression is among the companies jumping on this trend.  Flow batteries, chemical vats with charge generated by chemical flows are currently being tested on the grid by other startups.  Finally many solar plants are already implementing long term chemical driven storage in the form of molten salt vats to allow nighttime generation.

While these technologies are all promising, they won't be adopted overnight.  Rather, they will likely creep into the market as their need increases and they mature.  It is exciting, though, to see so much enthusiasm and creativity in the field.