Wind Farm, Columbia River Gorge, USA (IMAGE) Stanford University Caption A big challenge for utilities is finding new ways to store surplus wind energy and deliver it on demand. It takes lots of energy to build wind turbines and batteries for the electric grid. But Stanford scientists have found that the global wind industry produces enough electricity to easily afford the energetic cost of building grid-scale storage. Credit Charles Barnhart/GCEP Usage Restrictions Photographs, videos and other images provided by the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University are to be used - with appropriate credit - for editorial purposes only. Flopping, editing, altering or otherwise embellishing these images in any way that changes the images' editorial content is prohibited. Photographs and images provided for web use must be resized to low resolution. Permission is for one-time use only. Supplied photo/video/image file must be deleted after use. License Licensed content Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.