cnrs I international w 18 | Focus magazine ENERGY The Storage Challenge To secure its future and that of the planet, humanity must find alternatives to oil. But this vital transition toward renewable energy (currently the subject of a national debate in France), is highly dependent on the development of efficient storage solutions. Today’s technologies make it relatively easy to produce electricity, heat, and even hydrogen, but their long-term storage remains a daunting scientific and technical challenge—a high priority for CNRS researchers. By 2020, renewable energy should represent 23% of France’s total energy consumption, compared with 9.2% in 2011.1 Yet the large-scale development of sun, wind, water, and biomass-derived energy will only be possible if effective storage solutions can be found. “Renewable energy is by definition intermittent, because it is subject to the unpredictable nature of climate,” explains Pascal Brault, a researcher at GREMI2 and co-leader of the CNRS Energy task force. “So we must be capable of storing energy that is not immediately consumed —such as the solar power produced during periods of intense sunlight—to retrieve it when needed.” Today, the storage of energy, whether in the form of electricity, heat, or gas like hydrogen, is a significant scientific and technological impediment to the widespread introduction of renewable sources in the energy mix. “It’s an obstacle for large-scale stationary storage as well as mobile and transportation applications,” notes PROMES3 researcher and CNRS Energy task force co-leader Alain Dollet. Of all the energy vectors available today, electricity is the most difficult to manage. “Apart from magnetic technologies, which have significant limitations, there is no system capable of storing electric current,” Brault points out. For large-scale installations, one of the most widely-used techniques consists in using excess electrical production to pump water from a lake or river into a reservoir a re port by julien Bourdet, Jean-François Haït, and Fabrice demarthon Better Batteries Included 20 i Running Hot and Cold 23 i A Tankful of Hydrogen 25 i © P. DUREUIL/EDF © yell owj, J ag_cz, Dmytr o Smaglov, t anawatp ontc hour /Fotoli a
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