For the tech nerds out there, check out this intriguing article in the new Technology Review.
It’s about a new kind of battery in which all the active materials are liquid (molten metals and molten salt) rather than solids. This gives it several advantages over the whole range of solid-state batteries now available. It’s cheap and easily scaleable, and most importantly, it can handle very high currents. It looks like an incredibly promising solution for utility-scale storage of intermittent resources like sun and wind.
You can hear this all explained by MIT’s Donald Sandoway in the nerdtastic video at the link.
As always, it’s all about cost-effective scale. No sense celebrating yet. But every scrap of hopeful news on energy storage is worth sharing.
