There's a scene in the old Dustin Hoffman film "The Graduate" where a the wise Mr. McGuire shares advice with the young college grad, ready to embark on his career path (in the 60's people only had one, after all). What he says is, "I want to say one word to you, Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics." Great advice in the 60's, don't you think?

Now, in the spirit of this advice, I am going to update this to 2009. Are you listening? BATTERIES.

Why batteries? Well, the reasons are several. We need to store energy. Specifically, we need to store clean, renewable energy for base load power and to provide additional power for peak consumption times. We need to do this now. Hydrogen is not there yet. Flywheels, supercapacitors, and other cool technologies are still on the economic feasibility path. Batteries, named by Benjamin Franklin, have been around awhile and as an established technology, can be advanced by chemical engineers and others dedicated to improving old things rather than re-inventing the wheel.

R2EV, based at VengaWorks, has seen the writing on the wall and is now a member of a broader coalition of battery-storage mavens. R2EV seeks to standardize battery storage for mobile applications and potentially charge these using renewable energy, using a swap-out delivery for vehicle owners. There is also talk of locating battery manufacturing in retired Micron facilities.

With an upswing in installed renewable energy, mandated by the Obama camp and their stimulus package, energy storage will be more important than ever. Our grid isn't smart enough yet to handle intermittent resources at the rate they will be built. Speaking of the stimulus, the Department of Energy has some billions to give out to promote advanced battery storage.

Do you hear that, engineers? There's an old product out there with infinite new potential, and it takes you to improve it. Please do. We need someplace to store all this wind energy.