Duke invests in energy storage company (Charlotte)

Duke Energy Corp.’s investment in a company that’s developing new storage technology for electricity could help Duke’s wind-power operations now. But in the long term, it might prove important to its bread-and-butter utility business.

Duke was a minority investor in a $17 million venture-capital round of funding announced last week for General Compression Inc. of Newton, Mass.

The company will use the money to build its first commercial-scale compressed-air power storage system.

David Marcus, General Compression’s co-founder and president, says the immediate goal of the technology is to make the power produced by intermittent generators, such as windmills or solar panels, more usable for utilities and large energy consumers.

Read the full story in the Charlotte Business Journal.