The Problem: A lack of grid-scale battery storage makes the transition to renewable electricity difficult.
The Solution: Build massive physical battery storage buildings inspired by toy aeroplanes
When I was a kid, I would always buy a foam toy aeroplane when on holiday. I’d take it out of the packing, stick the decals onto the body, and then turn the propeller to wind up the elastic band before throwing the plane into the sky and watching it fly.
That twisted elastic band is an example of physical energy storage, much like old fashioned analogue clocks; by winding up an elasticated or sprung mechanism, energy would be sotred and then released once the mechanism was allowed to turn.
With the global shortages of lithium and the costs and difficulties of scaling up chemical battery production (the sort of batteries found in mobile phones and electric vehicles), opting for physical battery storage seems the way to go.
But there is a reason modern watches are powered by chemical batteries, not physical ones; energy density. Chemical batteries store more power in a smaller space than do physical ones.
Physical batteries are not the solution for electric vehicles, therefore, or other small items, but they can provide a cheap and rapid way to provide grid-scale storage, where space is not a problem.
The idea then is simple; using old warehouses, aircraft hangars and other such buildings around the country, install lines of ‘elastic bands’ (using more modern, durable materials than rubber bands) and then wind them up when power is abundant and demand is low, and release them to power generators to provide electricity to the grid when demand peaks.
These type of physical batteries provide a smaller scale, cheaper and more modular option to the current physical storage using water stored in high reservoirs and released when demand is high. They could be built all over the country inexpensively, and even made for larger houses in modular form, coming in a shipping container to be stored in gardens or driveways, providing people with backup power.
So, a quick, cost-efficient way to solve the problems of fluctuating electricity supply and demand to our, and other countries’, national grids, all inspired by a simple toy aeroplane.
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