There's a dam blocking the flow of renewable energy from wind fields and solar farms to the consumer, and its name is energy storage.

Albert Migliori, a Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist, and a host of other scientists around the world are looking for new ways to burst that dam — and in the process enable alternative energy sources to play a dominant role in energy production.

To get there will require many different ideas, but for his part, Migliori said he hopes a LANL technology aimed at storing electricity and converting it into ammonia or methane will play a helpful part in that mix.

"At some point, we will reach a point where renewables make up the largest portion of our energy sources, but we have to solve this storage problem first," Migliori said. "We have a chance to get in on the ground floor now, though, before we create a big mess."

Migliori will give a series of lectures around northern and central New Mexico on the topic over the next few weeks, called "Use It, Lose It or Save It: The Science of Renewable Energy Storage." The lectures are part of the lab's Frontiers in Science lecture series.

The problem with renewable sources, he said, is that you can't use them all the time. While small storage batteries exist, you can't use wind power to meet large energy demands when the wind isn't blowing, for instance, and you can't use solar power to meet large energy demands at night, he said.

But if you can find an efficient way to store that energy, you can transform those sources into a constant stream of power.

And there are several technologies evolving that could help with that, including pumping water up in a dam and then letting it flow down to create power later on or shooting compressed air into the ground so you can gather energy from it when it comes back out, Migliori said.

"You'll need those technologies and more to solve this problem though," Migliori said. "Every single viable solution is going to get used."

At LANL, the idea is to transform the notion of a hydrogen fuel cell into an energy storage device. In a process scientists think they can improve through the use of nanotechnology, it's possible to build a device that can store a certain amount of electricity and transform any overflow into ammonia or methane, which can later be converted back into power, he said.

The way he envisions it, those cooler-sized devices could be placed next to homes all over New Mexico. They would be managed by a power company to store alternative power, then shift it around when that power is needed.

And that might have an added bonus. Because the power would be stored locally at people's houses, they would be cushioned from power outages — with each house having its own minipower storage station, he said.

"Eventually, as it gets more efficient, it could possibly eliminate outages," Migliori said.

There are other advantages to that model, called distributed energy storage, he said.

"If you're going to make a big station, you end up with a huge amount of power in one place, which isn't a great idea," he said, adding that such a station could be at risk for security problems, among other things.

Central storage also puts a stress on power transmission lines. Energy tends to leak the farther it's transported so keeping a reservoir of energy closer to the people who will end up using it saves quite a bit of power in the long run, he said.

The lab is working with other labs and universities around the country on the idea, although it's probably 10 years away from becoming a reality — assuming the United States starts investing more money into this and other technologies, he added.

"This is the sort of thing where the basic science approaches are very clear to us, but the answers aren't quite there yet as to how to make it work," Migliori said. "We think it's possible to have production in 10 years or so, but we need to start funding this and other technologies now, not just at Los Alamos, but everywhere."

Migliori promises his talk will be understandable to nonscientists, and he hopes if people like the idea, they'll start spreading the word to their friends and telling legislators about it, he said. "We need people to be out there, to listen to this, and if they find this a viable approach, to tell other people about it," he said.

The lectures are free and open to the public. Each will begin at 7 p.m. They will be held Tuesday at the Duane W. Smith Auditorium, Los Alamos High School, Los Alamos; Thursday at the James A. Little Theater, New Mexico School for the Deaf, 1060 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe; Sept. 2 at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, 1801 Mountain Road N.W., Albuquerque; and Sept. 4 at the Nick L. Salazar Center for the Arts, Northern New Mexico College, 921 Paseo de Oñate, Española.

Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.

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