Interesting, I guess the water freeze isn’t a problem in those places
Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
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Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#32Interesting. There's a good video describing the operation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOWjwwKSR78 After watching it, I now understand that they aren't flooding the entire borehole, but rather are building a smaller high-pressure chamber at the bottom. The chamber is connected to pipes to a surface reservoir. When air is pumped into the chamber, it displaces water up toward the surface. When generating, the…
Totally out of my depth here, but does cooling the gas down have the added benefit that it'll be heated by the earth whilst stored?
what would be the benefit to it being heated by the earth during storage?
all the temperature management here looks to just be counteracting the temperature changes that naturally occur when you compress or expand a gas. i imagine if you compressed it and then pumped hot air into water-filled caverns you'd get some negative effects of thermal shock.
Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#33There is a great post on compressed air energy storage (CAES) over at Low-Tech Magazine:
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/history-and-future-o...
Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#34Curiously there's a second article discussing compressed air energy on the front-page of Hacker News at the moment - it's about the Amish and their hacker mentality [0]. There's a beautiful discontinuity between one of the more tech-savvy old-guard banks and the technology-careful Amish adopting the same technology.
Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#35GS isn't known for their scientific prowess - signal that they believe there is money in large scale ESS. Not sure if it's validating the technology at all though. Compressed air has been around for a long time at this point.
Who is known for their scientific prowess? A16z and with sprawling investments in web3? Capital is capital. We should be cheering on these types of investments regardless. Electric motors have been around for a looong time as well..
Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#36This brings to mind the other post about the Amish that's on today's front page. I believe the Amish sometimes use compressed air as an alternative form of power.
I read an article in a woodworking magazine about how one Amish woodworking shop was built to avoid using electricity. The whole shop ran off a stationary diesel engine driving a shaft in a floor trench and belt drove the larger stationary machinery like band saws, table saws, planers, drill presses, joiners and so on. But what about hand tools? A large belt driven air compressor off the diesel engine handled a myria…
Also adds a ton of pollution from using (often old and poorly maintained) Diesel engines in the name of avoiding the electric grid. Adding to that, compressed air is a much less efficient source of power than using electricity directly.
Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#37"Workers descend to hollow out a cavity, which the company then floods."
reminiscent of The Day Today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGE9153VFE
Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#38Can someone explain their revenue to me?
They claim 1m in revenue from their existing product which is: "1.75 megawatts (MW) of peak power output; a 2.2 MW charge rating; and 10+ megawatt-hours (MWh) of storage capacity"
How does that equal 1m in revenue? You have to pay to charge your air-battery during low-cost hours and then discharge it during high cost hours to make the difference in revenue.
The issue is, you can buy 2 megawatts of power 24/7 at average datacenter energy pricing (~5c/kwh) for $2400/day or 876k/year. Who is paying more than that for less energy and only at certain hours?
Is there some energy company somewhere that sells power during the day at like 50c/kwh and 1c/kwh at night???
Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#39In the 80s my grandfather used to do this for the former Soviet Union. Long story short they were pressuring a salt mine at night for energy storage and somebody failed to report a water leak during the day. They tried to depressurize the mine but it ended up blowing up anyway killing a couple people in The process. This shit can be really dangerous if done incorrectly.
Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage
#40GS isn't known for their scientific prowess - signal that they believe there is money in large scale ESS. Not sure if it's validating the technology at all though. Compressed air has been around for a long time at this point.
Who is known for their scientific prowess? A16z and with sprawling investments in web3? Capital is capital. We should be cheering on these types of investments regardless. Electric motors have been around for a looong time as well..
The VC and investment world in energy technology is quite different then the A16z and traditional VC world or financial heavyweights.
Having had GS invest in companies in the energy tech space in the past and having not particularly great success - I wouldn't think this is a strong signal. More that the financial heavyweights think there is action and they want to get in.