Batteries included

Even power storage is being revolutionized as researchers harness viruses and
look to liquids for the future

Renewable energy and alternative fuels are key players in the environmental race. Yet not far behind are more powerful and innovative batteries that can store energy when electricity production is higher than demand and release it when it is most needed.

Here scientific ingenuity is at its best.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, have trained viruses to build electrodes — the positive and negative poles of a battery — that better conduct electricity. The scientists altered two genes in a virus, which in turn is able to build the materials needed for electrodes that are even more effective than those in currently available lithium batteries.

This offers scientists the potential of developing smaller and more powerful batteries or memory chips for our laptops or MP3 players,
without the use of toxic chemicals.

Using viruses is cutting-edge technology, yet even further ahead, scientists are moving away from the idea that batteries should be solid,
and they are experimenting with liquids.

These batteries will have the same three elements as a normal one: a positively charged cathode, a negatively charged anode and a membrane in between. Yet all three will be molten metals, with each layer of liquid not mixing with the others. To keep the metals in liquid form they need to be encased in a container that is heated at around 500°C — about the maximum for a standard home oven.

Even if years away from full development, liquid batteries have enormous potential for storing large quantities of energy generated from wind farms at night.