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Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

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Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#81

Post by grawprog »

sandworm101 wrote: post #15
brittohalloran wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to those gravity power modules: a company called Ares ( https://www.aresnorthamerica.com/ ) is trying to use much smaller concrete 'cars' on rails to store energy. Not sure of the status of it but it looked promising to me. The direct use of compressed air is interesting. Taking it to the extreme, you could have compressed air as your primary utility piped through your home, and have appliances that run off c…

In the midwest, running compressed air through a home is called amish electricity. They do use it for many things. Ive seen air-powered blenders. (Air power is a big thing for woodworking and so its use in the home too is no suprise.)

Stoneworking too. Most of our hand tools are air powered. The CNC machines use compressed air for the waterjet, the vacuums, changing tools and probably other things. The shop has several tanks and a backup air compressor. There can be weird problems and their expensive. The main compressor's been shutting down randomly and it's going to cost $700 just for the kit we need to repair it.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#82

Post by throwaway5752 »

drizzle87 wrote: post #24

I was quite excited by compressed air storage when Lightsail came into the picture almost 5-7 years ago. Sadly, they could not make the economics work and ended up pivoting into a company that sells carbon fibre tanks for high-pressure storage. As someone who follows the energy space closely, Lithium ion batteries now have so much momentum and $$$ pumped into them via R&D work, it's going to be hard for competing ene…

There's a video somewhere of a failing flywheel, it's a fairly energetic explosion. I follow the energy space, also, and ... while I didn't expect Li batteries to have grid scale roles, I didn't think flywheels were going to succeed there. They have properties more like ultracapacitors (discharge rate suitable for continuous backup, clean up messy grid sine waves). I thought pumped air/pumped water was more likely because it scaled up so well and was old tech. Fuel cells, too, seems to fall more into the backup/spot generation/remote generation+NG access niches.

Looking on the bright side, anything that drives Li efficiency/density research is probably a very good thing.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#83

Post by Cthulhu_ »

linsomniac wrote: post #58
at-fates-hands wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern with batteries is we're so gung ho on producing these, we haven't stopped to consider the environmental impact from the manufacturing process or the incredible task of recycling these once they've outlived their usefulness. It reminds me a lot of when people pushed plastic for everything in order to save the trees and reduce paper consumption. Some 40 years later, we're now trying to get off plastic and de…

Back in the late 1800s, city planners met to try to come up with some plan for dealing with "the manure problem". Large cities couldn't handle the amount of manure produced by the horses in the city. They ended the meeting early, because they couldn't come up with any sort of plan. Then cars came along and they were all like "Yay! The pollution problem is solved!" I too wonder what the impact of so many lithium batte…

We can look at the current (used) battery market, the disposable Duracell thingies and such. I think there's a good recycling program for them, but even so, part of used batteries end up getting lost and in landfills and such.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#84

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jandrese wrote: post #62
mabbo wrote: post #31

> However, to store 360 Wh of potential electrical energy, the system requires a storage reservoir of 18 m3, the size of a small room measuring 3x3x2 metres. The authors note that “although the tank size appears very large, it still makes sense for applications in rural areas”. This would light a home for an hour, with LED bulbs and careful usage. And all it requires is a room-sized storage tank. So if I wanted somet…

For home use you also have to consider that you're basically making a bomb every time you store energy in the thing.

Eh, at least air isn't as dangerous as e.g. water would be, the tank can be / is designed to fail gracefully and there's overpressure valves.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#85

Post by 3pt14159 »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #82
drizzle87 wrote: post #24

I was quite excited by compressed air storage when Lightsail came into the picture almost 5-7 years ago. Sadly, they could not make the economics work and ended up pivoting into a company that sells carbon fibre tanks for high-pressure storage. As someone who follows the energy space closely, Lithium ion batteries now have so much momentum and $$$ pumped into them via R&D work, it's going to be hard for competing ene…

There's a video somewhere of a failing flywheel, it's a fairly energetic explosion. I follow the energy space, also, and ... while I didn't expect Li batteries to have grid scale roles, I didn't think flywheels were going to succeed there. They have properties more like ultracapacitors (discharge rate suitable for continuous backup, clean up messy grid sine waves). I thought pumped air/pumped water was more likely be…

The core insight for me was when Musk talked about how little the cost of Li mattered in the unit economics of Li batteries. It was something like 3% of the cost. The rest of it was mostly manufacturing costs. With so much room for improvements at scale and so many potential applications, it seemed like a sure winner.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#86

Post by jdietrich »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #29
drizzle87 wrote: post #24

I was quite excited by compressed air storage when Lightsail came into the picture almost 5-7 years ago. Sadly, they could not make the economics work and ended up pivoting into a company that sells carbon fibre tanks for high-pressure storage. As someone who follows the energy space closely, Lithium ion batteries now have so much momentum and $$$ pumped into them via R&D work, it's going to be hard for competing ene…

My concern with batteries is we're so gung ho on producing these, we haven't stopped to consider the environmental impact from the manufacturing process or the incredible task of recycling these once they've outlived their usefulness. It reminds me a lot of when people pushed plastic for everything in order to save the trees and reduce paper consumption. Some 40 years later, we're now trying to get off plastic and de…

>we haven't stopped to consider the environmental impact

We have. We've painstakingly analysed the energy and material inputs and the pollution outputs of the entire lifecycle of a lithium battery pack. After considering all these factors, lithium batteries remain an attractive energy storage option.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-48768-7_...

>the incredible task of recycling these once they've outlived their usefulness

Recycling lithium battery packs is complex and hazardous, but no more so than a multitude of other industrial processes. There is already substantial recycling capacity, thanks in part to the EU's WEEE directive. Using existing technologies, only 1% of the pack mass goes to landfill. We can't yet recover all of the lithium in a useful form, but we can recover most of the cobalt.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978111899197...

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#87

Post by beat »

ajuc wrote: post #74
jandrese wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For home use you also have to consider that you're basically making a bomb every time you store energy in the thing.

Any kind of high-density energy storage is basically a bomb. If you charge or discharge Lithium polymer or lithuium ion batteries "wrong" they explode too. I wouldn't want to be near a flywheel that stores 360 Wh of energy when it breaks.

On the other hand, flywheels can be easily buried underground, and easily contained. The max power of a flywheel is known, so it's just a matter of putting enough concrete between humans and flywheel, a straightforward and inexpensive engineering problem. And unlike compressed air, the containment isn't under constant, wearing pressure.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#88

Post by mikeash »

VikingCoder wrote: post #45
mikeash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should check out Ted Chiang’s story “Exhalation.”

This seems to be a legal copy of it? http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Te...

That’s the one. I have no special insight into the legality, but it looks legitimate to me.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#89

Post by dwyerm »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #82
drizzle87 wrote: post #24

I was quite excited by compressed air storage when Lightsail came into the picture almost 5-7 years ago. Sadly, they could not make the economics work and ended up pivoting into a company that sells carbon fibre tanks for high-pressure storage. As someone who follows the energy space closely, Lithium ion batteries now have so much momentum and $$$ pumped into them via R&D work, it's going to be hard for competing ene…

There's a video somewhere of a failing flywheel, it's a fairly energetic explosion. I follow the energy space, also, and ... while I didn't expect Li batteries to have grid scale roles, I didn't think flywheels were going to succeed there. They have properties more like ultracapacitors (discharge rate suitable for continuous backup, clean up messy grid sine waves). I thought pumped air/pumped water was more likely be…

> it's a fairly energetic explosion

So is a lithium battery explosion. So is a gasoline explosion. So is a flour mill explosion. So is a wind turbine explosion.

Energy is energy, and losing control of energy is never great, no matter where it comes from. So while I catch your meaning, it might be better to phrase it with respect to how controllable that energy is.

From what I know of flywheel storage, the problem mostly comes down to keeping the wheel from coming apart, and containing it when it does. The nice thing about using flywheels for grid storage is that you can bury them and make them large. The earth contains your explosion risk and the lack of jostling means that your bearings don't need to take as much stress and limits that failure risk.

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