Energy from Salt? – Adrienne Little, Malta, formerly of Google X

How Focusing on Failing Helped Create Energy Storage From Molten Salt

“It’s more about establishing an ecosystem of players” collaborating to make it a success. Adrienne Little

Energy storage is the single largest hurdle in transitioning to a 100% renewable energy economy, because of the intermittency issues in solar and wind energy in particular, so we can use it whenever we need it.

Listen to Adrienne Little, Thermal Systems Technical Lead of Malta, a new company birthed by Google X – the “Moonshot” division of Google where their self-driving cars also came from – in this fascinating conversation with host Joan Michelson about an amazing potential solution that comes from a basic item in front of our eyes: salt! Plus, the innovation process.

You’ll hear:

How Malta creates energy storage from molten salt.
Why Malta’s storage technology is more efficient for the grid than others on the market.
How they came up with it.
The criteria they needed to meet when developing this new innovative technology – and which technologies they compared it to.
Why having a range of skills, industries and perspectives at the table was so vital.
And, how she landed this cool job!

How do you try to lower your energy consumption? Tweet it to us @joanmichelson or on our Facebook page – like the page while you’re there – and post it in a review when you subscribe on iTunes or iHeartRadio, TuneIn or Stitcher.

You’ll also want to check out:

Esther Takeuchi, Inventor of the pacemaker battery who is working on new battery technologies at Stonybrook College
Shirley Ming, head of the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion at U.C. San Diego
Kathy Ayers, V.P. of Research and Development at Proton Onsite, hydrogen energy storage
Kate McGinnis, Managing Director of Fluence, a joint venture between AES Energy & Siemens that is developing energy storage systems, including the largest lithium ion battery in the world.

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