Grid-Scale Bubble Batteries Will Soon Be Everywhere

Comments

• SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Sure wish they mentioned the effeciency.

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  • it_depends_man@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Could be very high, even the waste heat from the compression could be used to achieve more compression and turbines get to above 90%, that all depends on the scales they’re building this at. 70% overall doesn’t seem unrealistic as an educated guess.

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    • oxbech@feddit.dk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      On their website (energydome.com) they claim “75%+” round trip efficiency, so not a bad guess!

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    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      even the waste heat from the compression could be used to achieve more compression

      No. Waste heat can by definition not be converted to mechanical work.

      Otherwise, one could build a perpetuum mobile: Convert heat to mechanical work, use that work to generate heat, convert it to work again, and so on. You’d have a machine that generates energy out of nothing, and that’s not possible because of the law of energy conservation.

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  • BlackLaZoR@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Sure wish they mentioned the effeciency.

    Without it you should dismiss the whole article as worthless garbage

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  • kalkulat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Damned good question, and I played stump-the-search-engine for 15 minutes and it’s like they’re AVOIDING that question

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• crystalmerchant@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I run a consulting practice around flexibility. Been around the energy space for 15 years. Boy if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “grid scale [x] will soon be everywhere”

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  • Chippys_mittens@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Eh, HRSG’s got real popular in the 90s and now most major plants have them. Its not a rapidly changing space, dont get me wrong. But new shit comes around every so often.

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  • kalkulat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Stockholders and aalesmen make them put that towards the end… to make investors feel dizzy I think

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• slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Image

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• BlackLaZoR@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It came from a gas supplier....

  Where do you think supplier got it from?

  Also: WHERE ARE THE ROUNDTRIP EFFICIENCY NUMBERS???

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  • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This CO2 is acting as a reusable fluid in a closed loop. The initial capture of the CO2 costs energy, but the battery keeps using the same CO2 over and over again. So the question of efficiency should be more about land usage and maintenance of the rest of the parts and the labor needed for each megawatt stored vs what other grid scale energy storage costs in materials and labor.

    The rough reality is that batteries aren’t going to be up to the task of grid scale energy storage unless they have a couple huge breakthroughs. Something like this is a far less materially expensive way to store energy for later use.

    Currently most grid scale energy storage is just pumping water up a hill and letting it back down through a generator. It is extremely limited in where it can be used and requires tremendous space to be effective.

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    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Compressing gas generates heat, and a significant part of that heat will be lost. Heat dissipation is itreversible, and this lowers efficiency a lot.

      BTW the same reason why in industry, pneumatic drives are universally replaced by electric motors: Their efficiency is too low.

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    • Natanael@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The number of decommissioned but still usable batteries are growing fast though, and plenty of storage sites use old battery packs

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    • humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      This concept was started 3-5 years ago, when retail batteries where $500/kwh. They are now under $100/kwh. Concept is worthwhile for diversification of resources and talent.

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• wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  We had these things called Gasometers in the UK for a long time. They expanded with the amount of gas stored in them, and they kept the pressure of the local gas supply up. A local gas reservoir, or “gas battery” if you like.

  These bubbles are basically the same idea but at higher pressure.

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  • eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s still near atmospheric pressure. Liquid CO2 expanding is powering the gas turbines.

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    • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Ah the bubble is the expansion volume. Not the storage volume… got it. I had it backwards.

      So yes, very similar then.

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• Simulation6@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I wonder how resilient they are to big winds.

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  • Deebster@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Also from the article:

    If the worst happens and the dome is punctured, 2,000 tonnes of CO2 will enter the atmosphere. That’s equivalent to the emissions of about 15 round-trip flights between New York and London on a Boeing 777. “It’s negligible compared to the emissions of a coal plant,” Spadacini says. People will also need to stay back 70 meters or more until the air clears, he says.

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    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      People will also need to stay back 70 meters.

      Huge amounts of carbon dioxide can be far more dangerous. The Lake Nyos disaster has killed over 1700 people.

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  • MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    160km/hr as per TFA.

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    • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Guilty, I only skimmed it. Thanks.

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    • H1AA6329S@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That’s really not that big of a wind. One bad storm and we have it burst

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  • kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The article also mentions that they can deflate it in around 10 hours

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• kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Sounds pretty good

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• MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Wonder how small you can scale these and retain efficiency, at twice the footprint (but I’m guessing a lot more volume) of a lithium grid battery, will we see these replacing home batteries down the line?

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  • BrightCandle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    They are talking hectares in this and it looks like the power density is well below that of batteries, but its also cheaper per MWh.

    I home long term battery makes a lot of sense, I have thought for a while something that goes from water and the air into methane or even liquid fuel would be highly beneficial as it could run from a generators through the winter and act for long term storage without requiring a turbine.

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    • MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The tanks might go underground mitigating (perhaps) the pressure explosion risk as opposed to lithium fire risk, but the honking great tent is an issue. Should have a longer life than Li Ion and be repairable vs somewhat recyclable. At scaled production it could certainly be cheaper, but some of the newer immobile battery chemistries might beat it. Synthesized fuel also makes a lot of sense. We shall see. What certainly makes sense is microgrids and power self-sufficiency.

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• partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  On the downside, Energy Dome’s facility takes up about twice as much land as a comparable capacity lithium-ion battery would. And the domes themselves, which are about the height of a sports stadium at their apex, and longer, might stand out on a landscape and draw some NIMBY pushback.

  This is surprisingly good! I would have figured it would have taken far more than twice the land than a Lithium battery solution.

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• aesviation@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Please let this be viable.

  The more renewable energy and storage, the better.

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• nulluser@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I imagine that the bubble portion is light weight enough, one could put it on the roof of a data center, apartment building, strip mall, etc. That appears to be the piece that takes up the most space.

  Another thought. I wonder if the bubble portion could be oriented vertically, maybe inside a simple enclosure to protect it from wind.

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  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I was thinking about much larger scale bubbles in “unwanted” geological depressions such as old open pit mines or rock quarries. The depression in the ground might offer more protection allowing it to scale up higher in volume.

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• amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  more greenwashing from the fossil fuels industry

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  • Chippys_mittens@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Thats not what this is regardless of what you’d personally like it to be.

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    • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      As per Energy Dome

      But the gas wasn’t captured from factory emissions, nor was it pulled from the air. It came from a gas supplier, and it lives permanently inside the dome’s system to serve an eco-friendly purpose

      these people are straight-up lying, how can CO2 be “eco-friendly” when all its industrial extraction processes involve fossil fuels as a source? notice how they didn’t mention who their gas supplier is? that’s because it would out them and their lies.

      it’s impossible to buy gas turbines without ultimately funding the fossil fuel giants. also let’s not ignore the environmental catastrophe that would happen if these were deployed en masse and a corruption scandal like the Beirut port explosion happened.

      it’s also not lost on me that this company is willing to contract with Xinjiang companies, despite the genocide that China is comitting there.

      it’s concerning whenever Google gets excited about a new energy solution because we all know how they treat the environment around their data centers. if deployed, they’d use the hot breath bubbles to excuse their seemingly infinite energy consumption increase in order to keep the AI bubble from popping. this is carbon credits all over again, they’ll use the CO2 to deploy more methane gas turbines because these would “cancel them out”.

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  • kalkulat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    But fossil fuel companies don’t want energy storage, right?

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    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They don’t want working energy storage. That’s why there are so many fairy dust projects like nuclear fusion.

      And on the other hand, there are well-proven established techniques like heat pumps, OV panels, Lithium batteries, and saisonal heat storage. Which should be built and used at a large scale because they work - but aren’t.

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    • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      sure they do, why do you think they’re buying lithium mines? they love mining resources because it encourages the “infinite growth” feedback loop to keep going

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