Here is a highly informative and readable article just published by Environmental Health Perspectives on the potential impact of flow batteries on wind energy. I'd have to say - from where we are now, that impact is just possibly massive. And I must admit, I also like the article because they have given me 3 quotes.

On the business case for this type of energy storage though, I have yet to come across an up-front capex figure on the cost of 1 megawatt hour capacity vanadium redox battery - as made by VRB Power Systems. This would make a transparent case for the investment - or not - in windfarms around the world.

As one might expect from an Environmental Health magazine, they were very keen about the low environmental footprint of the technology. These are the greenest of the batteries because they lack potentially toxic metals like " . . .lead, cadmium, zinc and nickel which can contaminate the the environment at all phases of the conventional battery life cycle".

I also keep thinking about nanosafe batteries, which can 80% recharge in 1 minute and achieve 15,000 charge/discharge cycles, which compares very favourably to 1,000 for lithium ion.

Energy storage really is making progress, something a couple of years ago I would have dismissed as fantasy. Now it is coming out of the lab and is deploying to the field, I think we may see some even more radical innovation unfold.