Good luck with your company! Management of the systems is a seriously underappreciated and difficult problem, especially with batteries. To do it well, you have to really know the chemistry.
I think the difference in fanfare is probably because, unless you change the levelized cost of stored energy to be less than the cost of producing power from fossil fuels in the first place, you can have a significant effect, but you can't really change the way the mainstream grid operates. Existing technologies can't do that.
The companies that have staked their reputation on trying to climb that mountain are those which have attracted the likes of Vinod Khosla, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates -- who are not in it to make a buck or megabuck, but to change the world.
Management and monitoring is an important part of changing the world, but whether or not it happens depends on the cost of the system. The suspense, then, and pressure, is on us. But all players stand to play an important part -- and make a fortune.
We are indeed a battery-based system for now, though we aren't necessarily tied to that technology long term. We've focused on building a strength is in flexibility and ability to distribute storage wherever its needed. It's always exciting to see new methods of storage being developed, as I agree with you about the economics of storage. I'm not quite convinced that batteries are an antiquated option just yet (or aren't feasible financially or environmentally, long term, especially as R&D continues to move there as well), but I'm just a lowly software engineer - I'll leave it for the rest of our team to worry about those problems :)
Congratulations on your successes thus far, and good luck for what the future holds!
I think the difference in fanfare is probably because, unless you change the levelized cost of stored energy to be less than the cost of producing power from fossil fuels in the first place, you can have a significant effect, but you can't really change the way the mainstream grid operates. Existing technologies can't do that.
The companies that have staked their reputation on trying to climb that mountain are those which have attracted the likes of Vinod Khosla, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates -- who are not in it to make a buck or megabuck, but to change the world.
Management and monitoring is an important part of changing the world, but whether or not it happens depends on the cost of the system. The suspense, then, and pressure, is on us. But all players stand to play an important part -- and make a fortune.