While clean energy is not a new area for Alphabet’s X, the moonshot division has previously only focused on energy creation. With a new “exploration” called Malta, Alphabet is now looking at cost-effective energy storage solutions.
“Explorations” are X’s “early-stage attempts to investigate new moonshots.” Energy storage is increasingly falling into that category as companies like Tesla are building battery-centered solutions to capture energy from renewable resources.
X is instead “developing a thermal storage system that uses salt to store renewable energy at scale.” Malta is specifically tackling the “mismatch” between the abundance of renewable energy from wind and solar and the lack of cost-effective technologies to store it, especially during peak power usage:
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