Massive Electricity Storage: Fixing Renewable Power's Achilles Heel

Renewable power generated from wind and solar is plentiful but intermittent by nature. Up to the point when system instability sets in, it can be distributed for use by piggybacking it onto a dispatchable baseload power system supported by coal or nuclear generation. As renewable power is rapidly being added to the global power system, a critical technology is required on a huge scale to convert the intermittent renewable power into dispatchable baseload power. For renewable power to assume the role of principal baseload power supplier of the future, reliable, safe, and economically feasible massive electricity storage technologies must be developed, demonstrated, and operated commercially. This session highlights the Achilles Heel of renewable power---its intermittency---in order to heighten public awareness of the critical need for and to stimulate RD&D action to deploy massive electricity storage to fix this Achilles Heel. This panel session will have overview presentations by invited speakers, followed by discussions among panelists and the audience. The follow-on panel discussion with the audience will serve to gather additional input and focus on future needs and data gaps.