3. Downwind: Why didn’t we think of that? Electricity stored as a temperature difference

The recent droughts across the U.S., specifically in California, have stressed the importance of power generation and storage strategies that use as little fresh water as possible. Energy production by fossil fuels and nuclear use water as a key part of power generation.

Today approximately 99% of grid-scale energy storage relies on pumped hydropower. Beyond the huge amounts of water required by this process, pumped hydropower is limited geographically to where there is a mountain and a water source.