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Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

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Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#141

Post by ed_balls »

rplnt wrote: post #58
laputan_machine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big question is how on earth are they digging out these caverns? That seems like a huge challenge, given that they're so far underground. Everything else seems relatively straightforward

It says repurposing old mining operations. Not sure how feasible that is.

I had a similar idea for repurposing an old mining operation. You take a closed gold, uranium or copper mine which is 1000-2000 meters deep. You create a nuclear rector at the bottom with "fire and forget" design. Only robots can do the maintenance. After 60 years you disable it, pour concrete into the shaft and move to the next location. If it melts, who cares? It's not gonna poison water supply.

Why was this not built before? I have no idea. Maybe robots are essential, we didn't have deep enough mines that were abandoned, energy was cheaper, no push for no emissions, it's not economical, other risks.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#142

Post by samstave »

usrusr wrote: post #81
nemacol wrote: post #59

I would like more detail on the "Thermal management system" and how long it could store the heat it captures. One of the benefits they touting is "Long duration energy storage" I would think the limiting factor would be the ability of the thermal management system to retain the energy it captured to reheat the compressed air. Am I thinking about this correctly?

To the best of my knowledge that thinking is spot on. A possible component that might be missing (in the thinking and/or in the proposed implementation): the stored heat could also be utilised separately if needed, so if you have an intermittent heat consumer and an intermittent electricity consumer you could consume the heat first, then leave the remaining compression energy (what you could recover without reheating…

After seeing videos of lava pouring into the ocean I have fantasized about a power generation system:

Artificial geo-thermal power gen:

Dig a deep enough hole but near the ocean, and let ocean water pour into the hole that gets close enough to magma such that the magma creates a steam blast back out a tube with a bunch of turbines to spin.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#143

Post by czbond »

samstave wrote: post #120
epistasis wrote: post #67

Grid storage is going to be big business in the future, on the order of size of storage for electrical vehicles. (And these will certainly not be mutually exclusive markets! Vehicle to grid tech will become widespread, as is already seen in the new F150 Lightning truck). Lithium ion will dominate for the foreseeable future, as the industry has scaled to massive sizes and already, and has the advantage of being curren…

Isn't Afghanistan known to be sitting on top of ~1 trillion$ worth of lithium, and also Bolivia?

I still believe that's why the U.S. invaded anyway. We didn't care about overtaking a country for some silly resistance leader. You do it for big money to bilk - like Iraq and oil.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#144

Post by EricE »

buryat wrote: post #107
reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people look at these and think "that doesn't seem like it'd be remotely worth it for something that size" but it's really hard to explain just how badly California has painted itself into a corner on distant generation, huge variance between excess renewable capacity and peak load, and transmission congestion. The numbers don't make sense to people. Pretty much all the solar plants we're putting in now have…

> it's really hard to explain just how badly California has painted itself into a corner on distant generation source needed if you're making such a bold statement

Just read the constant stream of news about it? They keep shutting down power plants in the name of the environment, but just shift the generation outside of the state. It's a numbers game that's meaningless as long as they still consume power, but it lets them virtue signal all over the place to people who don't pay attention to details - which sadly is most of us. How many times when we are give stats do we really wonder about the context around them?

Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#145

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

buryat wrote: post #119
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #68

Has anybody considered building flywheels into each wind turbine?

flywheels storing a lot of energy are very dangerous, if something happens it's a flying thing that destroys everything on its way

Like a giant rotating wind turbine?

Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#147

Post by crunchyfrog »

laputan_machine wrote: post #48
nkurz wrote: post #7

Interesting. 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…

The big question is how on earth are they digging out these caverns? That seems like a huge challenge, given that they're so far underground. Everything else seems relatively straightforward

Shaft mining is often used to reach underground deposits of iron, coal, etc. I believe they'd use the same process here.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#148

Post by creato »

ed_balls wrote: post #141
rplnt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says repurposing old mining operations. Not sure how feasible that is.

I had a similar idea for repurposing an old mining operation. You take a closed gold, uranium or copper mine which is 1000-2000 meters deep. You create a nuclear rector at the bottom with "fire and forget" design. Only robots can do the maintenance. After 60 years you disable it, pour concrete into the shaft and move to the next location. If it melts, who cares? It's not gonna poison water supply. Why was this not bu…

You need a hot and cold reservoir to generate power. Where is the heat going to go? This is why power plants are often built on rivers or near the ocean.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#149

Post by samstave »

danans wrote: post #110
nemacol wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warm air takes up more space. If you cool it before pumping it into the ground you will not waste time/energy. If you pump warm air down it will lose heat into the ground and shrink and you would lose capacity - pumping that last x% the tanks will be fuller until they cool down. You warm up the air on the way out to expand it and you get more air to spin the turbine. More bang for your buck. I believe is the thinking…

> Warm air takes up more space. If you cool it before pumping it into the ground you will not waste time/energy. The real masterstroke here might then be to put this system in an area with large diurnal temp changes like the desert, then charge this system with cool night air, and then reheat it and generate electricity during the day with warm daytime air. Heat pumps could be used to nudge the temp on either end int…

Many years ago I was doing shrooms in the Nevada desert -- and the epiphany I had was that the desert, and the caves all around and throughout the deserts served as "the lungs of the earth" -- they would heat and cool and would suck air in and out based on this...

I was 17 at the time, and I have been into some of the most incredible caves - the best in Ganung Mulu National Park in Borneo Malaysia...

As the rains flowed out and carried the guano from 5 million bats into the forest to fertilize it...

And then I realized it wasnt just the desert - it was the caves...

Caves (giant ones) are really important for planet health.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

#150

Post by usrusr »

karmakaze wrote: post #51
slingnow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a method of large scale energy storage that isn't dangerous if done incorrectly?

I think the comment is more about being easy to do incorrectly/dangerously. Pumping water up into a reservoir seems easier/safer.

Water reservoirs for energy generation/storage have gone through accidents killing thousands. I suggest looking up Vajont on Wikipedia.

The project mentioned in the article seems particularly safe to me as they seem to run it with constant pressure, defined by the hydrostatic head of their deeply dug cavities. They don't really have a pressure vessel, they have a flooded cavern where they create a bubble by pushing in air. If you pop off a seal from the pipes connecting compressors/turbines to the bubble could still hurt yourself a lot shooting parts through the room, but that should be all.

The cavity they build is 2000 feet deep, which equates to the pressure of a CO2 cartridge that you'd use for e.g. carbonating a beverage. Not coincidentally at all I think, they either aim for the deepest cavity were hydrostatic pressure isn't enough to liquefy parts of the air, or for the least deep dig that gives them liquefication, where the air "boils off" as they open the valves.

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