By 2020, California is aiming to get a third of its electricity supply from renewable sources of energy. However, as these sources aren’t constantly available, the state is planning to use giant batteries as a back up when the wind and the sun are not available.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. are currently piloting tests to decipher how to obtain optimum performance from these batteries. The batteries are quite large and have the capacity to store up to seven hours of power.  Despite this, they aren’t very efficient and a lot of energy is wasted during the course of charging and recharging.

Although the batteries could suffice for a few hours when the sun isn’t out or the wind isn’t blowing, they do not possess the capacity to fill in if these sources of energy were unavailable for several days or weeks.  As a result other power storage options such as flywheels are being explored.

Read more on storing electricity generated from wind and solar.

Energy / Environmental batteries / solar / storage / wind energy /