You arent storing electricity though you are converting it into chemical energy that gets converted back into electrical energy. It would be the same as using electricity to lift a weight up high then using the weight of that rock later to turn a generator.
If that counts as storing electricity then anything that can create electricity cught to be considered storing it. its valuable to understand how this works because you cant put electricity in a jar like people seem to think, you can use it to create chemical reactions that store energy though.
Good example with "storing" electricity by lifting a weight then later letting it fall and "releasing" the electricity.
I think the disconnect comes from the two views: how it's used, and how it works inside. Even "chemical" energy is just an abstraction for something more fundamental involving quantum states. The energy is being stored by a reconfiguration of the quantum states. From the outside, though, it's a sealed object with two terminals that you either send a current into, or draw from. From the outside it does effectively store electric energy and give it back.
Yeah, functionally it absolutely does store electricity when you look at it as an atomic unit, but when its broken apart it's something else entirely.
The only reason it's truly important is that it will stop people from thinking of silly solutions that come from misunderstanding things, in the same vein supply and demand is required knowledge to understand why govts can't just 'print more money'
I used to think electricity was some elemental thing that would swim through wires and you could theoretically put it in a jar, really it's more akin to magnetism flowing around a wire. The truth about electricity is utterly bizarre when you try to get a fundamental understanding of it and it is far more practical to just focus on ohm's law with volts amps and ohms.
Magnetism itself is a mind destroying topic when diving deep into it and trying to understand how it physically works, and it's fundamental to electricity as it is the main way electricity is generated. I suspect many electricians don't have the slightest clue about how magnetism works but are perfectly capable at their craft regardless.
When people talk of hydrogen as an energy source for cars it bothers me. Like a battery it's just a way to store energy and quickly transfer it to the car (the electrolyte emptying/refilling of a battery would actually be useful if it could be done for battery chemistries that matter, for fast charging). Hydrogen tanks are still likely filled with hydrogen (inefficiently) extracted using electricity from the grid.
Magnetism is still pretty mysterious to me. One reason big, strong neodymium magnets are so cool to hold.
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