Compressed Air Grid ‘Battery’ To Challenge Tesla Powerpack
Solar, wind, batteries, nuclear, tidal power, among others, provide carbon-free electricity. But their generation is usually immediately absorbed into the power grid for use or stored in lithium-ion batteries.
Large-scale energy hoarding is expensive, and quite frankly, with base metal prices skyrocketing, maybe unattainable unless the Biden administration allocates billions of dollars to upgrade the grid.
Toronto-based Hydrostor has found a solution to storing power on the grid that doesn’t involve batteries but instead stores energy in the form of compressed air in underground chambers.
California is becoming the new site for two new compressed-air energy storage plants that “will soon rival the world’s largest non-hydroelectric facilities and hold up to 10 gigawatt-hours of energy,” said Popular Mechanics.
Compressed air is part of a growing type of energy storage to stabilize the grid. Here’s how Hydrostor’s: A-CAES technology works:
A-CAES uses surplus electricity from the grid or renewable sources to run an air compressor. The compressed air is then stored in a big underground tank until energy is needed, at which point it’s released through a turbine to generate electricity that’s fed back into the grid.
Rather than vent the heat generated as the air is compressed, Hydrostor’s system captures that heat and stores it in a separate thermal storage tank, then uses it to reheat the air as it’s fed in to the turbine stage, which increases the efficiency of the system. This could prove to be key; compressed air storage systems have typically offered round-trip efficiencies between 40-52 percent, and Quartz is reporting more like 60 percent for this system.
Hydrostor’s A-CAES also makes use of a closed-loop reservoir to maintain the system at a constant pressure during operation. The storage cavern is partially filled with water and as the compressed air is piped in, the water is forced into a separate compensation reservoir. Later, when the air is needed, the water is pumped back into the air storage cavern, pushing the air out towards the turbine. – New Atlas
Hydrostor provides a three-minute of how the technology works.
Hydrostor has two major projects in active development – one in southern Kern County and one in Central California, creating a more practical way to store energy on the grid than costly batteries.
“Hydrostor’s patented and commercially proven A-CAES technology provides 8-12+ hours of energy storage, versus the 1-4 hours that current battery technologies can feasibly provide,” Hydrostor said.
When it comes to longevity, a compressed air energy storage plant has a lifespan of more than 50 years, far outpacing battery farms, like Elon Musk’s Tesla Powerpacks.
… and to be clear – all this talk about net-zero carbon emissions talk in the next couple of decades is just a guess by policymakers.
See more here: zerohedge.com
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Andy
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Having watched the video, this strikes me as yet more fantasy virtue-signalling nonsense.
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Carbon Bigfoot
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Andy you are right.
Compressed Air is still the most expensive in-plant utility by far: It takes NINE (9) UNITS of electricity to generate ONE (1) UNIT of air energy. That is if your compressed air system is properly designed and maintained –the majority are not. Information is from Section 1 – Page 28 from the BIBLE of Compressed Air System, SOLUTION SERIES by R. Scott Foss, Plant Air Technology, copyright 1983.
If he read this nonsense he would be pissing himself laughing—I AM!!!
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Wisenox
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I’ve made liquid nitrogen using this method. There are devices that stretch and compress hydrogen to produce ultra cool temperatures, which then liquify air molecules. When oxygen liquefies, it is able to respond to magnets.
The system they show has the same characteristics. Is there any risk of flammable liquids?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Andy and hopefully PSI readers,
If you study the right history of the 70s when ‘filling statrions’ had to close for the fact they had NO FUEL to sell, there was an ‘engineer’ who explained in detail how compressed air could practically power an automobile just as batteries and a electric dc-motor could. But this person pointed out the practical fact there was no infrastructure to support such an idea.
And obviously I do not remember the name of this man so you could do simple literature search.
However, I can state that there was an article in Poplar Mechanics of that earlier time, in which Smoky ??., a racing mechanic, proposed that the efficiency of the internal combustion engine could be increased by heating the intake air of the engine by its hot exhaust gases.
Now Smoky actually did this and increased the compression of the engine piston in its cylinder and was amazed to find there was no ‘knocking’ problem when even the hot intake air was ‘supercharged’.
One thing which Smokey ignored was that the race engines had more power when raced during the cool atmosphere of the nighttime. Hence, when he super-charged the heated intake air he was still putting less air into the cylinder to be compressed by the piston. Hence, the maximum ‘compression’ was less than with the natural un-supercharged and the unheated natural atmosphere. And of course, his idea died a silent death.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Burns Matkin
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The problem is that we don’t have an energy shortage. We have a never ending supply of petroleum and gas formed in the earth constantly. The CO2 produced is fertilizer for all the food on the entire planet. Please name one food source that doesn’t involve photosynthesis of atmospheric CO2. (Please don’t mean deep vents as a ridiculous comeback)
The entire idea of starving plants for nutrients is absurd. Then again, mainstream whatever has always been years behind reality. It was the consensus that gave us flat earth, sun revolving around the earth, disease causing vapors, bloodletting as a cure, unsanitary surgical equipment, etc.
If it is the consensus, it is probably wrong.
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STEVYN R DEMBO
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All that has to happen is Musk needs to come up with a way of mining the hydrocarbons on the moon Titan. Who would have thought that Titan would have had dinosaurs in the past.
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Chris
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I really need to start up a company making this kind of junk. Only through gov sponsorship is it possible to make a large sum of money off of this crap. Any idiot can spot at least two problems with this right off. One is that there isn’t any surplus energy on the grid. The second is the fact that this will consume more energy than what it can produce. It’s the same fundamental flaw with trying to put water up on a hill and using it to run generators. It’s a great idea for an emergency back up, not as a normal device to maintain a grid. All that we need to do is to use controllable energy sources such as gas, coal, etc.
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Andy
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I couldn’t agree more Chris!!
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Zoe Phin
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So we can now “cheaply” store ~50% of a small fraction of our energy supply. Neato.
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Boris Badenov
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The next person that uses ‘carbon’ as a ‘pollutant’ is going to prove they are dumber than Xi-den. We are blowing TRILLIONS and wasting hundreds of millions of lives for the carbon lie.
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Carbon Bigfoot
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Has anyone noticed the device look like the BORG SPACE SHIP:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=borg+spaceship+pics&t=h_&ia=images&iax=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2Fimg4.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20060617024611%2Fstartrek%2Fimages%2F8%2F86%2FBorg_cube_ship_over_earth.jpg
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