News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poised for a breakthrough. Parent comment

Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by nordify on Friday February 05, 2016 @05:24PM (#11045116)
Your storage system must be able to store enough energy to cover the cumulative output of the peaker plant in order for it to be able to replace the peaker plant.

That's a lot of storage. And you need to have enough overgeneration to be able to reliable fill it up daily. This sounds very expensive. Could it really work from an economic perspective?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by dragontamer on Friday February 05, 2016 @06:11PM (#11045394)
It already does work.

https://www.dom.com/corporate/what-we-do/electricity/generat...

This worked in 1970. Why wouldn't it work today? Energy storage solutions are deployed around the nation, and world, for this very reason.

The main advantage is that energy storage today is more efficient, with new technologies coming out.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is poi... by nordify on Saturday February 06, 2016 @01:25AM (#11046795)
> The main advantage is that energy storage today is more efficient, with new technologies coming out.

But not cheaper or anywhere close to the scale of pumped hydro?

Hydro requires favorable geography and/or rebuilding the grid to cope with the extremely large flows required to keep up with storage.

So, energy storage works, but is not economically feasible other than as research projects outside of hydro?

Looks like peaker plants are here to stay for a very long time.

[ Parent | on HN ]