Energy Storage is important because the supply of electric power has to match the demand in real time. Renewable power has problems doing this which creates d

Energy Storage is important because the supply of electric power has to match the demand in real time. Renewable power has problems doing this which creates demand for energy storage. Many powerplants such as Nuclear or Coal can take hours to startup and shutdown. The power markets and grid management orgs spend a lot of time scheduling power production and balancing supply and demand. Plants tell grid operators, we're running from 2-6pm on Tuesday - and face fines if the power isn't delivered. Some plants get paid to be on "standby" to deal with surges in demand. The price of power can at times become negative, because for some plants it is cheaper for the operator to get zero or even negative revenue for a short period vs. shutting down. Wind power Tax credits and carbon offsets at times mean windfarms can make money with a negative powerprice. Wind power can have problems meshing with the grid and scheduling/dispach of power. If you're producing power when you're not scheduled and demand is low the price a plant gets can be very low, even negative, because it isn't needed. Part of this is because of market rules, and part of it is actual operations. So if the wind is blowing during a period of time that people are not using much power the windfarm operator makes very little or nothing. If you can store energy for even a few hours it can be moved from periods of low demand to high demand which makes a lot of money and ensures you are not fined for failure to deliver power. The big economic impact here is that there are a lot of powerplants called peakers that only run durring periods of peak demand. Peakers tend to be the least efficent plants out there because they are run so little, like burning 1.5-2 times more natural gas per unit of output. If you can store energy then you can build efficent power plants that produce all the time and use a lot less fuel. Yes, I was an Energy Economist and part of the Enron Power Trading desk years ago.