History
Energy storage is a natural process that is as old as the age of the universe. Energy appears on the initial creation of the universe and has been stored in various media such as stars, which currently can be used by humans directly (with solar heating), or indirectly (via mariculture farms). Energy storage enables humans to balance the needs and availability of energy.
Energy storage systems commercially today can be categorized into mechanical energy, thermal, chemical, electrical, and nuclear.
As an activity, energy storage has been ongoing since prehistoric times, although not so clearly described as the activities in energy storage. An example is the use of wooden beams and large rocks for defence against the enemy; wooden beams and large rocks was ousted from the Hill to attack the enemies who invade.
Applications that still exists today in terms of energy storage is the control of waterways to drive a steamroller for the processing of the crops or moving the machine. A complex system of dams and reservoirs were built to store water as a source of potential energy. In some areas in the world, with the use of geographic advantage can store large amounts of water when the reservoir is not required, and is released into electrical energy during peak load electricity.
Energy storage (historical) 1
Energy storage became a major factor in economic development with the spread of electrical energy and purification of chemical fuel such as gasoline, kerosene and natural gas in the late 1800s. Unlike the organic energy storage media such as wood or coal, electricity has been used as soon as it is generated the first time. Electricity is often not stored on a large scale, but one day it will be a lot going on with the discovery of electric energy storage technologies like NiMH and Lithium ion battery which is already and able to store electric energy and mensuplainya for electric cars that exist today. Energy storage would be necessary given some type of energy sources cannot be relied upon forever. The wind is not blowing for turbine forever, light from the Sun can not be utilized optimally when cloudy weather or at night. Water power stations even today many are faced by the threat of drought.
Problem solving in energy storage for the purpose of electricity begins with the discovery of the battery at the first time. Electrochemical energy storage device is used to a limited extent because its capacity is small and the cost to make that expensive compared to electric energy produced by electrical pemangkit on the same amounts of energy. Other settlements of the same problem is found with the capacitors.
Energy storage (historical) 2
Chemical fuels have become a common form of energy storage, both in transportation and power plants, though some are difficult to produce returns of constituent. Chemical fuel that is commonly used is coal, gasoline, diesel, natural gas, LPG, propane, butane, ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen. This immediately fuel can be converted into mechanical energy and electricity with heat engines (turbine with boilers or internal combustion engines). This type of electric generators used in almost every power plant in the entire world.
Electrochemical devices such as fuel cell developed at the same time with batteries. However, for various reasons, the fuel cell is not well-developed until the manned space flight emerges where non thermal power source required in spacecraft. Development of the fuel cell has been increased this year as a result of the demand for non-energy hydrocarbon source increases.
At this point, liquid hydrocarbon fuels is becoming the dominant form of energy use. However, this type of fuel would produce greenhouse gases when used to drive the engine cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes. The non-carbon energy such as hydrogen, or low carbon emissions such as ethanol and biodiesel, developed to respond to threats that are likely to occur as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.
Several other technologies have also been researched as flywheel or storage of compressed air.
