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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

#291

Post by flyinghamster »

caseyohara wrote: post #274
_pmf_ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amish use compressed air: http://www.amishfamilyvalues.com/amish/amish-electricity/

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…

> So the Amish are allowed to use electricity, just not from the public grid? Generators seem like a weird loophole to their own rules.

That depends greatly on the congregation. Each congregation sets its own rules on how to deal with technology. "Not inside the home" is a very common technological limit. Cell phones might be stored in a shed, fed by solar chargers, for use out in the field. A workshop might have electricity from a wind/solar installation or even a diesel generator, but not the attached house.

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

#292

Post by m4rtink »

PixelOfDeath wrote: post #131
emptysongglass wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive question but couldn't our forerunners who otherwise succumbed to cold in harsher climates have exploited this fact to dig subterranean villages and towns? What's the element I'm missing as to why they didn't?

Ever tried to dig down a few 100m in your garden?

Try 390m, by hand:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodingdean_Water_Well

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

#293

Post by deeviant »

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…

The footprint of a nuclear power plant is pretty huge. That machinery is generally not optional even if doing a "fire and forget" design. Underground space would come at a premium cost, likely far more than could be saved on reactor design.

Also nuclear power plants obviously generate an absolutely massive amount of heat that needs to be dissipated, a task that would be difficult and expensive underground.

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

#294

Post by flyinghamster »

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…

A similar thing is done for natural gas storage. A well will be drilled into a rock dome that lies atop a layer of saltwater-saturated sandstone. Gas is then pumped into it, displacing the water, and then can be withdrawn later.

A report from 1961: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/42910/...

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

#295

Post by danans »

sokoloff wrote: post #265
danans wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite lithium ion efficiency, but it serves a different duration energy storage market (up to 24 hours vs single hours for lithium ion battery storage), and it has a much longer service life (50 years), so the levelized cost of storage might be lower than lithium ion battery storage.

The lithium ion batteries in my car store energy for weeks on end with losses around 1-2% per week (after an initial couple percent rapid drop).

What I meant is that current grid scale lithium ion battery storage projects are designed for at maximum a few hours between charge and discharge. They are mostly for shorter window grid stabilization, not to store energy for days or weeks.

LiIon grid scale batteries are still very expensive as a long term energy storage solution, they are sized to provide higher value grid ancillary services, like frequence regulation.

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

#296

Post by thinkcontext »

ds wrote: post #88
fenixnuke wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are likely operating on the wholesale markets, which are market priced. For the western grid there is a significantly wider price range of prices. On peak days in the summer, prices can go up above $1,000/mwh in the late afternoon for several days. During the late fall/early spring, there are negative prices in the late morning (like $20-$50/mwh) due to extremely high solar production and low demand, so utilitie…

Im familiar with energy markets. Im also familiar with the fact that any serious seller or buyer of energy locks in yearly pricing contracts and is unaffected by these swings. Any serious datacenter or industrial buyer is not relying on spot pricing. These energy markets also dont exist in every state.

If you are familiar with energy markets then by all means tell us the percentage breakdown of electricity consumed that is covered by long term contracts vs the spot market.

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

#297

Post by edzillion »

count wrote: post #218
srcmap wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the complexities related to making those caverns air and water tight for long period of time for long term energy storage requirements?

They don't need to be air/water tight for long term, just tight enough with a known leakage factor.

But how cheap is it to determine the leakage factor? I suppose they can just pour in the equivalent water and see if it leaks?

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

#298

Post by mabbo »

bumby wrote: post #228
mabbo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of system is used today in many modern industrial facilities. Case in point: Amazon warehouses. Lots of the mechanical automations inside some of those warehouses are powered by compressed air in open loop systems. As the conveyor pushes the item off, onto a different lane, there's a distinct hiss of air escaping. The movement of the machine was powered by compressed air. Out in the parking lot in these fac…

They aren't really the same types of systems. Pneumatic "muscle pressure" is common in lots of industrial applications, especially those that operate in austere environments. But those are different than the tech being researched in the article in large part because the mechanical compressors in industrial applications are hugely inefficient. Many constant volume compressors have 90%+ of the energy as waste heat. I b…

Oh I agree it's not quite the same as in the article. I was comparing to what the parent comment was saying about large pneumatic tube networks in ages past.

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

#299

Post by mderazon »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #105

In early 20th century in London there was an alternative hydraulic "power grid" with plants (aka pumps), storages and an underground distribution network of pipes. A building, for example, could connect to high pressure water mains and use it to power elevators. Electricity eventually won, but it's interesting to see an idea coming back. Zeppelins next! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Hydraulic_Power_Company

Isn't that the concept behind "streampunk" ?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

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

#300

Post by bumby »

cinntaile wrote: post #251
bumby wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't really the same types of systems. Pneumatic "muscle pressure" is common in lots of industrial applications, especially those that operate in austere environments. But those are different than the tech being researched in the article in large part because the mechanical compressors in industrial applications are hugely inefficient. Many constant volume compressors have 90%+ of the energy as waste heat. I b…

How does this work? How can you compress air without raising the pressure? Are you sure you don't mean adiabatic?

An external pressure (usually water) keeps it at a constant pressure.

Think of a bag of air under water on the ocean floor. The height of the water column is (relatively) constant, so the pressure in the bag is also constant. The air is being compressed as it goes from sea level into the bag, but inside the bag, the pressure is always the same. If you define the system boundary as the bag, it's an isobaric system. The volume changes, but the pressure is constant. Contrast that to the compressor you might have in your garage where the rigid tank provides a constant volume, but the internal pressure changes.

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