Construction begins on world’s biggest liquid air battery

Re:Construction begins on world’s biggest liquid air battery by gnramires on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @10:00PM (#23623081)

Those methods are actually quite similar, they're all ultimately related (limited by) tensile strength of materials. So costs and specific energy densities (per construction material unit) are similar. An important figure is cost/tensile strenght I guess.

(Compressed air: limited by container tensile strength; gravity batteries: limited by strength of cables)

I suspect even the constants involved are the same (given the materials are almost uniformly under nominal load), although I don't have time to investigate right now (a good curiosity research topic!).

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Re:Construction begins on world’s biggest liquid air battery by istjohn on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @11:46PM (#23623832)

They are storing liquid air at low pressure, so container tensile strength is not a limiting factor at all.

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Re:Construction begins on world’s biggest liquid air battery by trickstra on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @02:11AM (#23624653)

I believe these ones are not limited by tensile strength: https://interestingengineering.com/concrete-gravity-trains-m.... They are a bit limited by available geography, but far less than say pumped hydro.

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Re:Construction begins on world’s biggest liquid air battery by gnramires on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @12:28PM (#23630008)

Indeed! In this case it's the integrity and friction of the soil (of the hill) that's keeping the potential energy contained, and this hill soil is "free".

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