Nanotech Batteries – A New Energy Future

People want to use clean and green energy and live easy on earth’s resources. Many are changing to hybrid cars and using solar panels side by side with conventional sources of energy. But they hold a grudge. How to store large amount of energy in batteries? Hybrid cars fit batteries for power storage. But this power is not enough to last long distances and takes many undesirable hours to recharge. The storage battery is not very helpful during acceleration. Solar and wind also don’t provide us with power at constant rate. They give us energy intermittently. Their storage devices also take lots of space and money as well and yet they don’t seem promising for surge demand. Gary Rubloff, who is the director of the University of Maryland’s NanoCenter is also voicing a common consumer’s concern, “Renewable energy sources like solar and wind provide time-varying, somewhat unpredictable energy supply, which must be captured and stored as electrical energy until demanded. Conventional devices to store and deliver electrical energy — batteries and capacitors — cannot achieve the needed combination of high energy density, high power, and fast recharge that are essential for our energy future.”