Energy storage is increasingly perceived as a necessary and vital component of any future smart grid, yet meaningful energy storage is still a scarce and missing component.

Why is energy storage so important? - Energy storage helps solve the variability issues with renewable energy (solar and wind) generation, and as such will help balance the grid - Distributed energy storage located near the point of use will provide localized power, thereby decreasing the need to build new power plants and additional transmission lines. - Energy storage has been proclaimed by some as a "killer app" by utilizing batteries in parked electric vehicle (EV) fleets to feed stored energy back to the grid. Such Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) applications have promise to feed energy back to the grid for special purposes to benefit both the utility and the electric car owner. - Significant utility-scale storage capacity solves an even bigger issue, capturing and utilizing the massive amounts of electrical generating capacity that is otherwise typically unused.

The discussion will focus on: - Value chain elements of the energy storage industry - Who are local champions of energy storage - What are the interests of the investment community - What does the policy and regulatory framework look like - How do customers value energy storage - How is the smart grid expected to interact with energy storage

Join our panel on April 21st, to understand the technologies, trade-offs, market segments, future potential of energy storage.

Our 3 panelists are: - Dylan Steeg, Director Intel Capital, Intel's global venture capital organization. Dylan is responsible for several cleantech and semiconductor sectors, including photovoltaics, smart grid/demand response, datacenter energy efficiency, and semiconductor manufacturing

• Dan Nicollet, Co-founder, Supercritical Energy, a pioneer of Supercritical Fluid Technology applied to distributed energy generation and storage on the electric grid

• Marcus Wood , Partner and Chair of the Energy and Telecommunications (ENTEL) practice group Stoel Rives, . He focuses his practice on energy provider and energy facility developer clients.

The panel will be moderated by John Thornton, Founder, Clean Future, a consulting firm providing business and technical expertise at the convergence of energy, mobility, sustainability and the Smart Grid.