Storing solar and wind energy has finally become real!
Thanks to the costs of production has been driven down, renewable energy like solar and wind is booming across the country.
But there is still an issue to solve: how to store these kinds of energy if the sun doesn’t always shine and and the wind doesn’t always blow? Solar Reserve company may have found a solution: a large solar plant in the Nevada desert, that is able to store heat and generate electricity for about 10 hours. How? The plant stores energy by melting salt. The molten salt has to remain above 450 degrees Fahrenheit to stay liquid: it is used to make steam to power a generator. You can see a 640-foot-tall tower surrounded by 10,347 mirrors from miles away.
Another important invention of this kind has been made in California, where a researcher called Steve Crane, invented a compressed air system as a longer-lasting alternative to batteries.
Another Californian company found a way to use ice enregy to bring down electricity demand, using a sort of thermal battery.
These amazing technologies use our Mother Earth’s energy without wasting it in any ways. They aim at restoring the right balance between our Nature and our society…a balance that we lost a lot of years ago!
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