Batteries included: New wind turbines and solar panels come with built-in storage

By John Upton

If you want to use solar power at night or wind power on calm days, you need batteries that can store energy after it’s produced. But why bother with two pieces of equipment when you could have one?

Engineers are now beginning to build batteries directly into wind and solar systems.
Combined renewable generation-storage systems are just starting to be deployed in the wind sector. From a report last month in Quartz:

[W]hat if every wind turbine became a node in an energy internet, communicating with the grid and each other to adjust electricity production while storing and releasing electricity as needed? That’s the idea behind General Electric’snew “brilliant” turbine, the first three of which the company said … will be installed at a Texas wind farm operated by Invenergy.