From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poised for a breakthrough

Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by beat on Friday February 05, 2016 @12:56PM (#11043218)

Energy storage is such a no-brainer. It makes solar/wind viable for both base load and peak load generation. The numbers required are very measurable and predictable. It doesn't require magical, exotic technology (as the elevated reservoir and compressed air mechanisms show). There's always going to be some thermal losses in transformation, but they're going to be pretty similar across technologies.

Another nice thing about solar + storage is that it can scale very small, very inexpensively. Imagine putting a set of solar panels or a wind turbine plus some storage in a village in Africa. It may not be worth wiring it to an expensive grid, but just getting electricity there can make so many other differences.

Beyond that, the ability to small-scale and decouple reduces the power and influence of large corporations and the government-industrial complexes that wreak so much havoc. You don't need the drama and abuse of the petroleum or nuclear industries anymore.

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Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by SilasX on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:02PM (#11043750)

Scalable? Compressed air and reservoirs are about the opposite of energy-dense and require a lot of space per unit energy.

I'm optimistic about the role that energy storage can play in converting green tech to base-load capability, but it seems like it requires some technological advances unless you want to devote huge territories to becoming low-density batteries.

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Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by beat on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:34PM (#11043976)

I'm not talking about physical size. I'm talking about cost and complexity. An air tank with a compressor pump at one end and a turbine at the other is simple, reliable, well-understood, off-the-shelf technology. How much energy can you store in an air tank that would fit on the back of a truck? Hook it up to another truck full of solar panels, and you have a local electric grid, capable of powering at least a few buildings, at very reasonable cost and minimal sophistication required for operation and maintenance.

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Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by SilasX on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:49PM (#11044101)

Scalability covers spatial scalability, and so necessarily involves talking about physical size relative to energy stored in this context.

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Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by beat on Friday February 05, 2016 @03:05PM (#11044222)

Is that actually important, though? Does it mean inexpensive small-scale energy caching in off-grid areas is impossible? Would a truck-carried air tank (or bank of them) hooked to solar-powered compressors not actually work, or be cost-prohibitive?

Size doesn't actually matter here.

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Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by SilasX on Friday February 05, 2016 @03:17PM (#11044293)

But it does. The Wikipedia numbers [1] give a mass density for compressed air storage of 40 kJ/kg and volume density of 8 kJ/L. That's 0.011 kWh/kJ or 0.0014 kWh/L. So a 10,000 L tank gets you only 14 kWh, or ~$1.50 worth of energy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage#...

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