From participants as large as the Department of Energy to individual corporations interested in electrical storage, are assembling in La Jolla, California July 13 through 16 for the Storage Summit. In the burgeoning industries surrounding the storage of electric power and the power grid, the Storage Summit is where the future is being discussed, with partnerships, policies and scale-up strategies taking shape.

Large-scale or "bulk" storage solutions need to be hatched in order for wide-spread deployment of electric plug-in vehicles to be practical. For a constant flow of power to occur, storage of surplus electrical energy can prevent price fluctuations during periods of low supply, such as rush-hour or holiday peaks.

Smaller storage vessels such as the lithium-ion battery in hybrids and evs need to overcome issues of capacity, overheating and potential for explosion before they can replace the NiMH batteries now in use. Electric vehicles, now seen as mere load on the grid, may play a role as a "tool" to serve as "customer-side" storage to add to the capacity of the grid. The networking of thought made possible by the Storage Summit may see the development of the concept of "community storage" to extent our ability to sustain ourselves.