The following is excerpted from the Marketplace Tech episode.
A key theme of adaptation and resilience is actually decentralization. A sort of self-sufficiency, whether that “self” is a house, a business or even a city. And when it comes to energy, it means moving off one big central grid and creating little islands of power in cities, neighborhoods and individual homes.
People are doing it with solar-powered backup systems, even microgrids, little localized power plants that generate, store and distribute power. But the key to any of those systems is the storage part. And where do you store power? Batteries.
Foundry Director Kristin Persson and Gerd Ceder are working on it. They’re professors of materials science and engineering at University of California, Berkeley. They are also married, and both work on battery technology. Sometimes together, sometimes in friendly competition.
Listen to or read the transcript of the episode here.