Abstract

Since the beginning of the era of electricity, energy is produced and consumed at the same time. The development of a large energy storage capacity would mean a great change in the energy landscape: it would allow electric mobility and a large diffusion of renewables like sun and wind, that are not continuous. Unfortunately, today batteries are still too expensive to be associated with renewables, and too heavy to trigger the boom of a large electric car fl eet. But according to various market analyses, other applications are closer to be economically competitive, like energy security, peak shaving and anti-blackout systems.