I was at a great talk yesterday by Professor Donald Sadoway who spoke about his Liquid Metal Battery technology. I’m grossly oversimplifying but Prof. Sadoway is trying to use the technology use in Aluminium smelting to create a huge, cheap battery that can store energy to help smooth out renewable power contribution to the smart grid.

I found it fitting that when I walked into what was a talk about big-ass batteries, I saw a panel on the wall:

Which controlled a big-ass fan:

For context, the diameter of the fan was larger than the length of the Nissan Murano sitting below it.