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 @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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