One underrated source of storage in the grid is water heaters, fridges and A/Cs. With some "demand response" technology (part of the smart grid), this could be tapped.
Interesting, but labeling them "storage" is about as far down the path of false advertising as you can get. They're just saying that by reducing a commercial freezer's temperature by a fraction of a degree can result in serious energy savings if the grid is feeling a squeeze.
Storage means you can get energy out of it, not simply make it use less. But yeah, a smart grid is effectively necessary for any possibility of improvement.
If the commercial freezer is well-insulated, doesn't making it slightly colder now allow you to draw less power for a while afterwards as the room slowly rises back towards its acceptable peak temperature? Nothing harmed by taking already frozen things and making them a bit colder for a while. Certainly it is less efficient than just maintaining the desired temperature, but probably more efficient than just throwing away all that wind energy.
Still, though, it's all about reducing demand, not modifying supply. Flywheel storage can literally pump juice into the grid, temporarily raising the net energy level (yes, by reducing it earlier, similar to the freezer). And because of that quality there's a huge potential market, because those high-stress times are when electricity costs the most.
I guess my point is that, with flywheels, you can make money through nothing but the power grid. With a freezer, you can only reduce how much you lose.
Absolutely. I thought there would be more discussion of flywheels (or rather, I thought the article itself would actually discuss them). The article alluded to a long lead time for needed upgrades to transmission capacity, but I wonder how long it takes from placing an order to getting a flywheel sitting next to a windfarm?
Make your water hotter when there's a surplus of electricity, that way you'll need less later when that surplus might be gone. If you have control of millions of water heaters, that's a lot of buffer.
See: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/smart-grid-demand-re...