Super Eco

Photo credit: Seldom Scene Photography (was Old Dog Photo) on flickr

Energy sources like the sun and wind have the capacity to provide endless amounts of clean energy if we could only figure a way to properly store them when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

A team of engineers from Cambridge University think they might have a solution: a giant battery that can store energy using gravel. Elevating the idiom "you've got rocks in your head" to a whole new level, these scientists hope to solve the sustainable issue plaguing renewables.

About his battery Jonathan Howe, founder of Isentropic states that: "If you bolt this to a wind farm, you could store the intermittent and relatively erratic energy and give it back in a reliable and controlled manner." Howe in order to prove his theories is designing and constructing a small pilot plant that could store 16MWh at full capacity, this could be enough energy to serve the electrical needs of thousands of homes. WorldChanging, in an article, describes how two properly outfitted silos of gravel 7 meters tall and 7 meters in diameter would be all that is needed for storage and retrieval of the renewable energy.

Surplus renewable energy storage is a looming issue requiring a sustainably elegant solution, Isentropic's battery may just prove to be one.