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Energy storage is getting a bump in the president’s proposed 2013 budget. It’s an extra boost that the industry says that it needs to get out of the lab and into market. Just how far off is the concept whereby such stored power is released when the wind dies down or the sun doesn’t shine?

It’s here now. But some major hurdles are blocking wide scale deployment. Balancing the electricity load is difficult. Storage devices, if they can be shown to work at commercial scale, would be a huge boon to an industry that is trying to advance renewable power. It can help utilities avoid downtime and thereby save billions in lost opportunities while also allowing such companies to sell blocks of peak power at premium prices.