Wind and solar power are intermittent, generating power when it’s available rather than when it’s needed, so the green energy transition will require huge amounts of energy storage. This could end up taking many forms, from conventional lithium-based “big battery” installations, to flow batteries, silicon phase-change batteries, molten salt batteries, iron-air batteries, gravity batteries, carbon dioxide expansion batteries, and other more unusual ideas like buoyancy batteries.

Each has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of efficiency, size, location, installation costs, operating costs, input and output power ratings, longevity and how long it can store the energy for. That’s good, since different solutions will fill different needs – some backing up the power grid during instantaneous demand spikes, others smoothing out the mismatched daily curves between demand and renewable supply, and others still helping to address seasonal supply drops, like when solar drops off through the winter.

Here’s another for the pile, coming out of Finland. Polar Night Energy says it’s just opened its first commercial sand battery at the premises of “new energy” company Vatajankoski, a few hours out of Helsinki.

Taking advantage of the huge output of solar energy in places neighboring the Sahara Desert, a massive undersea power cable is coming to Europe from Egypt. Bringing 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy, the GREGY interconnection will run from northern Egypt to Attica, Greece.

The San Diego County Water Authority is planning to use its San Vicente Reservoir to store solar power making clean energy in the region viable, according to an article by NPR published on Friday.

Powering 130,000 homes

The project will take ten years to be built and will see large underground pipes connect San Vicente’s lake to a new reservoir about 1,100 feet higher. California’s solar power will pump water into that upper reservoir, storing electricity.

The tech is called Flettner Rotors.

A multidisciplinary design company called 3deluxe has revealed a new low carbon-emission superyacht concept called FY.01. The company made the superyacht design public on Friday, and it is sure to wow thanks to its eco-credentials, aesthetics, and usage of cutting-edge technology.

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Flettner Rotors were developed over 100 years ago and use rotating vertical pipes to transform wind energy into a highly efficient transversal force. The technology relies on an effect referred to as the Magnus force and it has seen a powerful revival over the years due to the availability of new materials that make it more efficient and viable.

Although it is currently predominantly used on utility vessels, more and more companies have begun to substantially increase fuel efficiency on large scale commercial vessels by adding Flettner Rotors.

FY.01 is also silently powered by electricity generated by white solar panels on the roof surfaces of the yacht. However, the Flettner rotors remain its main source of energy. Depending on the wind conditions, the force generated by these systems supersedes that of a sail of equivalent size.