[pyoung]

The biggest need for storage is to offset the intermittency of solar and wind, and to help shift peak solar generation (typically 12-2pm) to match peak demand (typically 4-8pm). Reliable and affordable storage is a prerequisite to wide scale solar and wind generation.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/californias-duck...

[semi-extrinsic]

Sure you want to smooth out intermittencies, but this plant is way too tiny to actually store energy when it's windy and releasing it when it's not. It's more likely to handle peaking on a minute-by-minute basis.

Considering that a single big wind turbine produces 8 MW, this 80 MWh storage facility can only store 5 hours of production from two wind turbines!

And one of those turbines only costs about half of the Tesla storage facility.