Stockpiling electrons: key to take-up of renewable energy?

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Large-scale use of renewable energy may depend on the ability to store electricity. Manel Romeu Bellés reports Electricity is slippery stuff: invisible, and almost impossible to store in quantity except by converting it to some other form of energy. Yet many experts believe that the widespread take-up of wind and other renewables will depend on our being able to store electricity effectively. Timescales for energy storage in electric power systems range from seconds to days. Wind power shows random variations over almost any timescale, points out Claus Nygaard Rasmussen, who researches energy storage at the Institute of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. This means that for power companies, the ability to smooth out power dips of just a few seconds or minutes can be just as useful as for variations lasting hours or day