The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for storing energy in alkaline solution for the purpose of qualifying regenerative energy, in particular from wind turbines and photovoltaic systems, for demand-based supply to consumers and/or for storing temporary excess capacities from conventional energy management by absorption and desorption of steam in or from alkaline solutions, for example sodium hydroxide solution, wherein the electrical energy is coupled in by electric drives for compressing (1.10) the steam from the desorption and the recovery of the coupled-in energy is implemented by the use of the heat from absorption for heating and flash distillation (2.3) and technical work-performing expansion (7, 8) of the flash steam to the pressure level of the absorption. The advantage of the invention consists in the location-independent storage of energy with a high energy density, in comparison with the prior art, up to a working capacity which has until now only been achieved by pumped-storage hydroelectricity plants.