Energy Storage

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wingnut771

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Can't seem to find a thread for this topic except the BusinessTech thread so thought I would create one in the Electricity section.
Seeing we are going down the path of renewables and their on off nature, energy storage is the next big thing we need to master. So far, it's all been about lithium batteries, so I though I would post some alternative ideas/technologies in this new thread. Feel free to post any others.
 
Just as a general critique of all the above videos: If you are converting electrical energy into stored potential energy via a mechanical process, you need absolutely massive scale. This is why the only things we see doing this are pumped storage schemes. A small amount of high pressure tanks, or lifting and lowering a little weight isn't going to cut it. There just isn't that much energy involved in doing that.

Think about the anchor for a large boat. The motors on board that boat can lift that anchor and its cable with relatively little effort. If it was the huge amount of energy that was just being used, they would have captured it by now, but it simply isn't.


The only energy storage technique I have seen that will actually work are iron flow batteries. They work because they trade off power density for reliability and cost.

Lithium ion batteries are about the best thing we will get for portable devices, cars, and smallish backup batteries. For grid scale stuff, they are simply too expensive to scale.
 
AlphaJohn said:
Sodium-ion says hi

Click to expand...
Still doesn't scale quick enough for grid level storage. Flow batteries separate the power a battery can deliver from the energy it can store.

Adding more energy storage to an iron flow battery pretty much means just adding another tank with some de-ionised water and iron salt in it.
 
konfab said:
Still doesn't scale quick enough for grid level storage. Flow batteries separate the power a battery can deliver from the energy it can store.

Adding more energy storage to an iron flow battery pretty much means just adding another tank with some de-ionised water and iron salt in it.
Click to expand...
Not according to the video you posted. The plate is the limiting factor as it is coated in iron then uncoated during the process. They can just add more shipping containers of 125kW 1MWh units.
 
wingnut771 said:
Not according to the video you posted. The plate is the limiting factor as it is coated in iron then uncoated during the process. They can just add more shipping containers of 125kW 1MWh units.
Click to expand...
Thanks for finding that, I was going on the information in the Two-bit da vinci video (predictably the IFLS type people don't give all the information)


Still, being able to go from an 8 hour battery to a 12 hour battery without much cost increase is significant.
 
Quite promising for domestic and grid-level leccy storage is the liquid-metal battery. Check out Ambri. If it works as promised it could be a game-changer.
 
Posted this a while back... guess it belongs here
Temujin said:
Not too 'off topic', saw this alternative to batteries/pump storage/salt etc for anyone interested... huge gravity batteries, something we should be looking at given being a water scarce country

Energy Vault® - Enabling a Renewable World™ Through Energy Storage

Energy Vault partners globally to deliver innovative energy storage hardware, software, and service solutions. Enabling a renewable world.
www.energyvault.com www.energyvault.com

Gravitricity – Renewable Energy Storage

gravitricity.com gravitricity.com

Click to expand...
 
konfab said:
Just as a general critique of all the above videos: If you are converting electrical energy into stored potential energy via a mechanical process, you need absolutely massive scale. This is why the only things we see doing this are pumped storage schemes. A small amount of high pressure tanks, or lifting and lowering a little weight isn't going to cut it. There just isn't that much energy involved in doing that.

Think about the anchor for a large boat. The motors on board that boat can lift that anchor and its cable with relatively little effort. If it was the huge amount of energy that was just being used, they would have captured it by now, but it simply isn't.


The only energy storage technique I have seen that will actually work are iron flow batteries. They work because they trade off power density for reliability and cost.

Lithium ion batteries are about the best thing we will get for portable devices, cars, and smallish backup batteries. For grid scale stuff, they are simply too expensive to scale.
Click to expand...

Compressed air is the one that interests me the most for small scale generation. You can use DC straight from solar panels on the compressor side and have an AC generator on the output side and possibly use the heat and cooling caused by compression and expansion for heating and cooling water/rooms. So it seems a lot of the losses in conversion and heat can be reused for other purposes thereby decreasing effective losses.
 
B-1 said:
Compressed air is the one that interests me the most for small scale generation. You can use DC straight from solar panels on the compressor side and have an AC generator on the output side and possibly use the heat and cooling caused by compression and expansion for heating and cooling water/rooms. So it seems a lot of the losses in conversion and heat can be reused for other purposes thereby decreasing effective losses.
Click to expand...
and you can extract water from the air.
 
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