An energy storage system that could potentially power a city of half homes with just renewable energy has been developed by researchers at MIT The study, published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, estimates that the system would cost about half as much as pumped hydroelectric storage—the cheapest form of grid-scale energy storage to date. ( The Thermal Energy Grid Storage-Multi-Junction Photovoltaics ). Massachusetts Institute of Technology system, called “sun in a box”, stores heat from excess wind and solar power in tanks of molten silicon. The light emitted can be converted into electricity and fed to a grid. The system is 100,000 the cost of the current cheapest grid-scale energy system, pumped hydro, and would be far more affordable than lithium battery storage, the researchers said.
An energy storage system that could potentially power a city of half homes with just renewable energy has been developed by researchers at MIT ( The Thermal Energy Grid Storage-Multi-Junction Photovoltaics ). Massachusetts Institute of Technology system, called “sun in a box”, stores heat from excess wind and solar power in tanks of molten silicon. The light emitted can be converted into electricity and fed to a grid. The system is 100,000 the cost of the current cheapest grid-scale energy system, pumped hydro, and would be far more affordable than lithium battery storage, the researchers said.