Xcel Energy’s mammoth heavy duty storage batteries to store renewable energy juice

Storing renewable energy for use later in grids has left technological experts scratching their chins and chewing their pencil tops for ages. Well, things are getting better for renewable energy now, thanks to Xcel Energy, the firm that has developed a battery big enough to store wind power-generated electricity for 500 homes, a feat never thought of or worked on before. The sodium sulfur (NaS) battery is currently under testing stages at an 11-megawatt (MW) wind farm somewhere near Luverne, Minnesota. The battery weighing in at 80-tons was made by NGK Insulators Ltd. of Japan. The mammoth uses wenty 50-kilowatt modules, and stores 7.2 megawatt-hours of electricity, instantly absorbing or generating one megawatt of power.

Just recently we came across yet another innovative way to store renewable energy, the flywheels. A world with flywheels and batteries like these, keeping store of our renewable energy would be so much greener.
[Greentechmedia]