Quinone Battery to make solar and wind power cheaper

We all know that renewable energy is the need of the hour and has many advantages to traditional sources of energy. But do you ever ask, if it is all good, why we are not using it completely?

Why we are not using Renewable energy for all our energy needs?

Whenever this question has been asked, most of the people respond with two reasons:
1. It's expensive to use
2. It's unreliable or inconsistent

And yes, these are the two reasons which make it difficult for Renewable energy to become a sellable commodity. But when you will dig deeper, you will find that the root cause is only the reliability and inconsistency. So, if the wind is blowing well, we produce more electricity but if it's diminished, we don't get any electricity.

To make things more consistent, we use batteries, it solves our first problem but it increases the cost because batteries require regular maintenance and we have to replace them every couple of years.

The project we are going to discuss today is going to address this problem. And if we are able to bring down the cost of batteries, green energy will become super lucrative.

Why storage of electricity is important for renewable energy and not for conventional energy?

 With conventional sources, we get a constant supply of electricity and because energy sources can be supplied as per need but in renewable energy, the energy source is not in our hands and can't be supplied constantly and that's why storage plays a very vital role in renewable energy.

To understand its importance more, we can also take an example of a wind farm, which generates electricity 24x7 while we require more electricity in the afternoon compared to night. 

Batteries are used to store electricity when it is in abundance which we can use later as and when required.

What is the solution?

The solution is to make batteries less expensive. In batteries, we use Bromine which is expensive and toxic for nature.

So, if we can find a cheaper alternative to Bromine, that would help us to reduce the cost of batteries.

For this reason, Harvard University researches developed a new type of battery with the help of organic material Quinone.

Quinone can be synthesized from the plant called Rhubarb. Which makes it cheaper as well as good for nature. If we are able to use Quinone in our batteries, the new batteries will reduce the cost of batteries by 2/3 of their current cost well below the $100 per kilowatt-hour benchmark set by the United States Department of Energy.

Let me know in the comment section if you have any other good suggestions to reduce the cost of renewable energy? I would glad to add and share that info with other people by updating this post!