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A comment on Wind now competes with fossil fuels, and solar almost does. Parent comment

Re:Wind now competes with fossil fuels, and solar almost does by noselfrighteous on Thursday October 08, 2015 @11:39PM (#10358014)
I was thinking about this the other day, what's the loss factor in compressed air storage?
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Re:Wind now competes with fossil fuels, and solar almost does by ars on Friday October 09, 2015 @03:46AM (#10358664)
Quite high. When you compress air it heats up and that energy is lost.

When you expand it it gets very cold and you lose pressure (you can wait a bit for the air to warm it up to regain some of what was lost).

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Re:Wind now competes with fossil fuels, and solar almost does by JupiterMoon on Friday October 09, 2015 @05:50AM (#10359051)
Could one store the excess heat from the compression and use this to heat the de-compressed air later?
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Re:Wind now competes with fossil fuels, and solar almost does by ars on Saturday October 10, 2015 @08:59PM (#10367605)
It's not easy to store heat. If it was possible (practical) you could skip the compressed air and just store the heat directly and use it for energy.

The whole reason for the complicated schemes is because it's hard to store heat.

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