Quinones, which are found in rhubarb and elsewhere, can be used to create inexpensive, efficient batteries suitable grid scale renewable energy storage. This is a potentially huge development. Production of renewable energy by nature is variable thus storage is essential for renewable energy to be reliably created at mass scale without causing problems for the grid. Rhubarb batteries could be the solution!
[The batteries] are water soluble, which means you can set up large, inexpensive tanks to hold electricity, instead of having to engineer solid-state batteries like ones found in cars. These “flow batteries” would be capable of storing one kilowatt hour of energy using chemicals that cost $27, a third of the price of existing systems.