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Feb 2, 2019

“Sun in a Box”: A New Way to Store Renewable Energy for the Grid

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

The new design stores heat generated by excess electricity from solar or wind power in large tanks of white-hot molten silicon, and then converts the light from the glowing metal back into electricity when it’s needed. The researchers estimate that such a system would be much more affordable than lithium-ion batteries, which have been proposed as a viable, though expensive, method to store renewable energy. They also estimate that the system would cost about half as much as pumped hydroelectric storage—the cheapest form of grid-scale energy storage so far.


Delivering solar- or wind-generated power on demand, the system, which uses molten silicon, should be cheaper than other leading options.

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