Very simple.

Every ship in the game will have access to thier very own energy vault that will hold as much energy as they are in lvl. When ever energy is used it must be repaid. It never recharges.
There should be a kick ass mission to give you the art.

Afterwards, it is a subtab in your ship tab. (Like repair, and view ship stats)

Repay any energy used from your vault with current energy.

Perhaps there could even be stats about the vualt that could be affected by the captains Race/Profession such as:

1: the ability to change energy into minerals
2: the chance to change the energy in the vault into research
3: the ability to morph pure energy into the artifact that you desire!!

not bad,tho need details...

I have an even better idea, what if there were a way where we could just snap our fingers and get whatever we want?!

-1 ... energy vaults and storage and etc etc etc have been brought up before. Some are eh, most are blah. I don't really understand your concept other than it sounds like a credit card, but in the end that doesn't give you more energy, it just becomes more of a hassle. Not even going to comment on your second post.

the best use for an energy vault would be that it would collect any leftover energy when ranking up so you can use it later....perhaps have the stored energy drain over time so that you must use it quickly or it fades away

I can see a couple uses forthis. working the insane schedule i do, if I'm close to lvling at night when i don't have much time, I'd love to chunk that energy til I have time again.

The other use would be to store up max energy + so you could blitz when you have RSL implants and Neural's both active for maximum xp boost

While I would love to have some form of energy storage device, it ain't gonna happen. It would allow people to rank faster because they have more energy than they should. In case nobody else has noticed, Dan has been creating things (tech collectors and assassins for example) with the clear intent of SLOWING people down on their ranking.

the fact that this idea, while not completely horrible, is barely mediocre yet the title is....

I would -1 to this

Keeping up with the pre-requesite to donate to a Legion base and donating excess energy... is the exact same idea as this. So it's sort of already in play and yet.... with a nice little con to it. That being you have to research your legion base's tech to be able to contribute to it according to it's level *claps*. This idea seems.... redundant. I love that word.... redundant. It should be declared word of the week. "Redundant is Redundant"