Goldman Sachs invests $250M in compressed air energy storage

Post by mispell » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

Melatonic wrote: post #210

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…

I have been saying for years that we should have a windmill system you could place on top of a building or home that powers a larger, highspeed flywheel buried underground below the house. Ideally with the flywheel in vacuum and balanced by magnets for reduced friction. This ensures no loss converting energy types (mechanical to mechanical) and it can be used later for electricity or other energy in small, large burs…

Post by robomartin » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

EricE wrote: post #186

robomartin wrote: post #159

Based on my reading, these systems are, at best, in the order of 60% efficient. To state the obvious, this means that fully 40% of the energy they pull from the grid will be wasted. Burned. Never to be recovered. How is that a good idea? Solar? Well, solar isn't free energy. What's the comparison to grid scale batteries for storage? That process is far more favorable, with efficiency exceeding 80%. I have to admit no…

You are spot on - the real answer is readily available: nuclear. We have reactor designs that if the active systems fail the reactors shut down naturally instead of running away. We have designs that can be burning all that "spent" fuel we are currently trying to bury for 10,000 years (!). Modular reactor designs in particular have incredible promise to provide for infinite scaling (just add more modules as needs inc…

Post by labawi » Sun, Jan 16, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #276

caseyohara wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting: "This was a crisis. Without electricity, the Amish couldn’t store milk, and the church was adamant that Amish were not going connect to the local electric company. Finally a solution was found. It was decided that diesel generators could be used to power the refrigerators. This decision allowed the Amish to continue their tradition as dairy farmers without having to use public electricity." So th…

If they are against centralisation, that makes sense; but then, unless you drill your own wells and refine the crude yourself, you're still getting fuel from someone else.