Europe’s energy crisis hits science

Re:Europe’s energy crisis hits science by the_duke on Thursday September 08, 2022 @10:33AM (#32766135)

There often is a renewable energy surplus at night (wind /hydro) and more recently even around noon, thanks to solar. And renewables are constantly expanding.

The whole problem with renewables is the temporal variation and lack of large scale storage.

Producing hydrogen (and potentially converting that into more traditional gasses) is a perfectly viable solution, but of course such infrastructure can only be stood up over years and decades. It's not relevant for this winter.

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Re:Europe’s energy crisis hits science by westurner on Thursday September 08, 2022 @10:45AM (#32766366)

TIL that apparently Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) has the lowest cost of any method of energy storage? "Techno-economic analysis of bulk-scale compressed air energy storage in power system decarbonisation" (2021) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192... https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/07/21/compressed-air-storag... :

> They found the former has a considerably lower Capex and a payback time of only two years. [compared with Lead Acid batteries]

I wouldn't thought that a Gravity Battery would've been more efficient than compressed air: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery

Also TIL about geothermal heat pump energy storage: https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-geothermal-ideal-energy-... :

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