[HN Gopher] CO2 batteries that store grid energy take off globally
___________________________________________________________________
CO2 batteries that store grid energy take off globally
Author : rbanffy
Score : 99 points
Date : 2025-12-21 15:27 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| No mention of round-trip efficiencies, and claims are that it's
| 30% cheaper than Li-Ion. Which might give it an advantage for a
| while, but as Li-Ion has become 80% cheaper in the last decade
| that's not something which will necessarily continue.
|
| Great if it can continue to be cheaper, of course. Fingers
| crossed that they can make it work at scale.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I'm seeing round trip efficiencies around 75%.
|
| That's not terrible.
|
| These things would probably pair well with district heating and
| cooling.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| That is shockingly good. EIA reports existing grid scale
| battery round trip is like 82% which do not have moving
| parts. ...in 2019, the U.S. utility-scale
| battery fleet operated with an average monthly round-trip
| efficiency of 82%, and pumped-storage facilities operated
| with an average monthly round-trip efficiency of 79%....
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
| lambdaone wrote:
| A theoretical study shows 77%, which is in the same ballpark:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403212.
| ..
|
| A few percent here of there is not that important if the
| input energy is cheap enough.
| hawk_ wrote:
| "I am seeing" as in do you use CO2 batteries at home or
| something?
| Gys wrote:
| Lithium supply is limited. So an alternative based on abundant
| materials is interesting for that reason I guess?
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Lithium is not that limited, current reserves are based on
| current exploration. More sources will be found and exploited
| as demand grows.
|
| And if you want an alternative, sodium batteries are already
| coming online.
| standeven wrote:
| It's also very recyclable, so big batteries that reach end
| of life can contribute back to the lithium supply.
| cogman10 wrote:
| In fact, the limiting element for Li chemistries is
| generally the Nickel. Pretty much everything else that goes
| into these chemistries is highly available. Even something
| like Cobalt which is touted as unavailable is only that way
| because the industrial uses of cobalt is basically only li
| batteries. It's mined by hand not because that's the best
| way to get it, but because that's the cheapest way to get
| the small amount that's needed for batteries.
|
| Sodium iron phosphate batteries, if Li prices don't
| continue to fall, will be some of the cheapest batteries
| out there. If they can be made solid state then you are
| looking at batteries that will dominate things like grid
| and home power storage.
| to11mtm wrote:
| > Even something like Cobalt which is touted as
| unavailable is only that way because the industrial uses
| of cobalt is basically only li batteries.
|
| AFAIR Cobalt is also kinda toxic which is a concern.
|
| But as far as that and
|
| > In fact, the limiting element for Li chemistries is
| generally the Nickel
|
| Isn't that part of why LiFePO was supposed to take off
| tho? Sure the energy density is a bit lower but
| theoretically they are cheaper to produce per kWh and
| don't have any of the toxicity/rarity issues of other
| lithium designs...
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Isn't that part of why LiFePO was supposed to take off
| tho?
|
| It's the exact reason LFPs are taking off, especially in
| grid storage scenarios.
|
| The high cycle life combined with the fact that all the
| materials are easy to acquire and dirt cheap.
| Tade0 wrote:
| There are over 200 billion tonnes of lithium in seawater,
| it's just the least economical out of all sources of this
| element.
|
| There are plenty more, but they're explored only when there's
| a price hike.
| cogman10 wrote:
| AFAIK, the brine pits are pretty economical, they just
| require ocean access.
|
| What I'm somewhat surprised about is that we've not seen
| synergies with desalination and ocean mineral extraction.
| IDK why the brine from a desalination plant isn't seen as a
| prime first step in extraction lithium, magnesium, and
| other precious minerals from ocean water.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| likely a matter of location. desal tends to be on the
| coast and near cities which tends to be pretty valuable
| land, making giant evaporation ponds a tough sell.
| namibj wrote:
| You don't use ponds, you run the desalination to as
| strong as practical and follow up with either
| electrolysis or distillation of the brine.
|
| But once summer electricity becomes cheap enough due to
| solar production increasing to handle winter heating
| loads with the (worse) winter sun, we can afford a lot of
| electrowinning of "ore" which can be pretty much sea salt
| or generic rock at that point.
|
| Form Energy is working on grid scale iron air batteries
| which use the same chemistry as would be used for
| (excess/spare) solar powered iron ore to iron metal
| refining.
|
| AFAIK the coal powered traditional iron refining ovens
| are the largest individual machines humanity operates.
| (Because if you try to compare to large (ore/oil) ships,
| it's not very fair to count their passive cargo volume;
| and if comparing to offshore oil rigs, and including
| their ancillary appliances and crew berthing, you'd have
| to include a lot of surrounding infrastructure to the
| blast furnace itself.)
|
| It will take coal becoming expensive for it's CO2 before
| we really stop coal fired iron blast furnaces. And before
| then it's hard to compete even at zero cost electricity
| when accounting for the duty cycle limitations of only
| taking curtailed summer peaks.
| gpm wrote:
| > What I'm somewhat surprised about is that we've not
| seen synergies with desalination and ocean mineral
| extraction.
|
| I think these guys are basically using desalination tech
| to make lithium extraction cheaper:
| https://energyx.com/lithium/#direct-lithium-extraction
|
| As I understand it (which is far from perfectly) it's
| still not using ocean water, because you can get so much
| higher lithium concentration in water from other sources.
| But it's a more environmentally friendly, and they argue
| cheaper, way to extract the lithium from water than just
| using the traditional giant evaporation pools.
| namibj wrote:
| Do you know how much magnesium you find with silicon and
| iron as olivine? It's just the silicon that we haven't
| yet tamed for large scale mechanical usage that makes
| them uneconomical to electrolyze.
| namibj wrote:
| We have 10 years of 2021 global energy production (including
| oil/coal/gas!) of LFP in the oceans; but yes, sodium
| batteries are probably cheaper.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Also sodium batteries are coming to the market at a fraction of
| the cost.
|
| "We're matching the performance of [lithium iron phosphate
| batteries] at roughly 30% lower total cost of ownership for the
| system." Mukesh Chatter, cofounder and CEO, Alsym Energy
| lambdaone wrote:
| I see this as complementary to other energy storage systems,
| including sodium ion batteries; each will have its own
| strengths and weaknesses. I expect energy storage density
| cost will be _the_ critical parameter here, as this looks
| best suited to do diurnal storage for solar power systems
| near out-of-town predictable power consumers like data
| centers.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Maintenance of the system is my biggest question. Lot of
| mechanical complexity with ensuring your gas containment,
| compressors, turbines, etc are all up to spec. This also
| seems like a system where you want to install the biggest
| capacity containment you can afford at the onset.
|
| All of that vs lithium/sodium where you can incrementally
| install batteries and let it operate without much concern.
| Maybe some heaters if they are installed in especially cold
| climates.
| namibj wrote:
| Don't even really need notable heaters if you regulate
| your thermal vents enough.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Sodium batteries will take 15 years to overtake LFPs cost.
| Stop gargling on hype please.
| Herring wrote:
| Efficiency isn't that important if the input cost is low
| enough. Basically the utility is throwing it away (curtailment)
| so you probably can too. CAPEX is really the most important
| part of this.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| AFAIK cost here counts only the manufacturing side. While your
| conclusion that in the long run economies of scale will
| prevail, the lifetime costs are probably more than 30%. For
| example I expect recycling costs to be significantly worse for
| the Li-Ion.
| namibj wrote:
| Grid scale LFP with once daily cycling lasts 30 years before
| the cells are degraded enough to think about recycling.
|
| And those are very low maintenance over that time.
|
| You're probably mostly going to swap voltage regulators and
| their fans, perhaps bypass the occasional bad cell by turning
| the current to zero, unscrewing the links from the adjacent
| cells to the bad cell, and screwing in a fresh link with the
| connect length to bridge across.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| It's cheaper, doesn't involve the use of scarce resources, and
| is expected to have an operational lifetime that is three times
| longer than lithium ion storage facility.
|
| That's a significant difference.
| namibj wrote:
| 2021 total world energy production of approximately 172 PWh
| would require 27.5 billion metric tons of lithium metal at
| typical 0.16g/Wh of a modern LFP cell; meanwhile, we have
| approximately 230 billion metric tons of lithium for taking
| (e.g. as part of desalination plants producing many other
| elements at the same time from the pre-consecrated brine)
| from the oceans.
|
| Note that we require only a fraction of a year's worth of
| energy to be stored, I think less than 5% if we accept energy
| intensive industry in high latitude to take winter breaks, or
| even more with further tactics like higher overproduction or
| larger interconnected grid areas.
|
| And that's all without even the sodium batteries that do seem
| to be viable already.
| cossatot wrote:
| Do you think desalinating 10% of the world's ocean water is
| feasible? What are the energy resources necessary to do
| that?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Batteries aren't really suited for seasonal storage - they
| decay when fully charged.
|
| And foreseeable future they provide such huge value for grid
| stability that it wouldn't make sense economically either.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Does pure-ish CO2 have advantages over regular air or the freon-
| like substance used in air conditioning?
|
| How much energy us used to purify and maintain the CO2?
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's pretty cheap to acquire a boatload of and, assuming you
| don't get it directly from burning fossil fuels, there's really
| no environmental harms of it leaking into the atmosphere. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
| zahlman wrote:
| > CCS could have a critical but limited role in reducing
| greenhouse gas emissions.[6] However, other emission-
| reduction options such as solar and wind energy,
| electrification, and public transit are less expensive than
| CCS and are much more effective at reducing air pollution.
| Given its cost and limitations, CCS is envisioned to be most
| useful in specific niches. These niches include heavy
| industry and plant retrofits.[8]: 21-24
|
| > The cost of CCS varies greatly by CO2 source. If the
| facility produces a gas mixture with a high concentration of
| CO2, as is the case for natural gas processing, it can be
| captured and compressed for USD 15-25/tonne.[66] Power
| plants, cement plants, and iron and steel plants produce more
| dilute gas streams, for which the cost of capture and
| compression is USD 40-120/tonne CO2.[66]
|
| ... And then for this usage, presumably you'd have to
| separate the CO2 from the rest of the gas.
| analog31 wrote:
| It's easy to liquefy, so it has a density advantage over air,
| and would be bad if released but not super bad.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Suffocation seems like the most relevant concern in the event
| of a catastrophic leak.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It is a necessary risk. Oxygen is dangerous when heat is
| involved, and its low critical point is harder to work with
| than co2.
| ajb wrote:
| These days CO2 is actually quite commonly used in air-
| conditioners as a refrigerant, R-744. Fluorinated gases like
| Freon are being phased out due to being even worse for global
| warming.
| lambdaone wrote:
| This seems almost too good to be true, and the equipment is so
| simple that it would seem that this is a panacea. Where are the
| gotchas with this technology?
|
| Clearly power capacity cost (scaling compressors/expanders and
| related kit) and energy storage cost (scaling gasbags and storage
| vessels) are decoupled from one another in this design; are there
| any numbers publicly available for either?
| zahlman wrote:
| Well, it isn't going to _sink_ enough CO2 to move the needle:
|
| > 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.
|
| So it's really just about enabling solar etc.
| api wrote:
| It's a battery not a sequestration technology.
| dmd wrote:
| It has nothing whatsoever to do with sinking CO2.
| zahlman wrote:
| I understand this, but it coincidentally _uses_ CO2 and it
| 's _hard for me to understand_ why the technology would
| sound "too good to be true" _without_ imagining such a
| purpose.
| to11mtm wrote:
| I don't know _numbers_ but I at least remember my paintball
| physics;
|
| As far as the storage vessel, CO2 has much lower pressure
| demands than something like, say, hydrogen. On something like a
| paintball marker the burst disc (i.e. emergency blow off valve)
| for a CO2 tank is in the range of of 1500-1800PSI [0].
|
| A compressed air tank that has a 62cubic inch, 3000PSI
| capacity, will have a circumference of 29cm and a length close
| to 32.7cm, compared to a 20oz CO2 tank that has a circumfrence
| of 25.5cm and a length of around 26.5cm [1]. The 20oz tank also
| weighs about as much 'filled' as the Compressed air tank does
| empty (although compressed air doesn't weigh much, just being
| through here).
|
| And FWIW, that 62/3000 compressed air vs 20oz CO2 comparison...
| the 20oz of CO2 will almost certainly give you more 'work' for
| a full tank. When I was in the sport you needed more like a
| 68/4500 tank to get the same amount of use between fills.
|
| Due to CO2's lower pressures and overall behavior, it's way
| cheaper and easier to handle parts of this; I'm willing to bet
| the blowoff valve setup could in fact even direct back to the
| 'bag' in this case, since the bag can be designed
| pessimistically for the pressure of CO2 under the thermal
| conditions. [2]
|
| I think the biggest 'losses' will be in the energy around re-
| liquifying the CO2, but if the system is closed loop that's not
| gonna be that bad IMO. CO2's honestly a relatively easy and as
| long as working in open area or with a fume hood relatively
| safe gas to work with, so long as you understand thermal rules
| around liquid state [also 2] and use proper safety equipment
| (i.e. BOVs/burst discs/etc.)
|
| [0] - I know there are 3k PSI burst discs out there but I've
| never seen one that high on a paintball CO2 tank...
|
| [1] - I used the chart on this page as a reference:
| https://www.hkarmy.com/products/20oz-aluminum-co2-paintball-...
|
| [2] - Liquid CO2 does not like rapid thermal changes or
| sustained extreme heat; This is when burst discs tend to go
| off. But it also does not work nearly as well in cold weather,
| especially below freezing. Where this becomes an issue is when
| for one reason or another liquid CO2 gets into the system. This
| can be handled in an industrial scenario with proper design I
| think tho.
| lambdaone wrote:
| Fantastic detail, thank you.
| api wrote:
| So... it's a compressed air battery but with a better working
| fluid than air.
|
| I remember wondering about using natural gas or propane for
| this a long time ago. Not burning the gas but using it as a
| compressed gas battery. It liquifies easier than air, etc.,
| but would be a big fire risk if there were leaks while this
| is not.
|
| Seems neat.
| to11mtm wrote:
| > Not burning the gas but using it as a compressed gas
| battery. It liquifies easier than air, etc., but would be a
| big fire risk if there were leaks while this is not.
|
| FWIW Back in the day, Ammonia was used for refrigeration
| because it had the right properties for that process; I
| mention that one because while it's not a fire risk it's
| definitely a health risk, also it's a bit more reactive
| (i.e. leaks are more likely to happen)
|
| > Seems neat.
|
| Agreed!
| pfdietz wrote:
| Except you have to trap and recycle the uncompressed CO2,
| hence that enormous bag to hold all that gas. Color me
| skeptical.
|
| With compressed air, you just release the air back to the
| atmosphere.
| scellus wrote:
| Thermal energy storage is one gotcha. It will eventually leak
| away, even if the CO2 stays in the container indefinitely, and
| then you have no energy to extract.
|
| The 75% round-trip efficiency (for shorter time periods) quoted
| in other threads here is surprisingly high though.
| scotty79 wrote:
| "First, a compressor pressurizes the gas from 1 bar (100,000
| pascals) to about 55 bar (5,500,000 pa). Next, a thermal-energy-
| storage system cools the CO2 to an ambient temperature. Then a
| condenser reduces it into a liquid that is stored in a few dozen
| pressure vessels, each about the size of a school bus. The whole
| process takes about 10 hours, and at the end of it, the battery
| is considered charged.
|
| To discharge the battery, the process reverses. The liquid CO2 is
| evaporated and heated. It then enters a gas-expander turbine,
| which is like a medium-pressure steam turbine. This drives a
| synchronous generator, which converts mechanical energy into
| electrical energy for the grid. After that, the gas is exhausted
| at ambient pressure back into the dome, filling it up to await
| the next charging phase."
| vaylian wrote:
| And I suppose the whole thing is a closed system? Which means,
| none of the CO2 would be released to the outside?
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| Would this be effective at smaller volumes? Could it get down to
| say the size of a washing machine for use at home?
| lambdaone wrote:
| Very unlikely. All the technologies involved work best at
| scale; for example, the area-to-volume ratio of the liquid gas
| storage vessel is a critical parameter to keep energy losses
| low.
| standardUser wrote:
| I've been waiting for large-scale molten salt/rock batteries to
| take off. They've existed at utility scale for years but are
| still niche. They're not especially responsive and I imagine a
| facility to handle a mass amount of molten salt is not the
| easiest/cheapest thing to build.
|
| This sounds better in every way.
| creativeSlumber wrote:
| what happens if that large enclosure fails and the CO2 freely
| flows outside?
|
| That enclosure has a huge volume - area the size of several
| football fields, and at least 15 stories high. The article says
| it holds 2k tons of co2, which is ~1,000,000 cubic meters in
| volume.
|
| CO2 is denser than air will pool closer to the ground, and will
| suffocate anyone in the area.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster
|
| Edit: It holds 2k tons, not 20K tons.
| tonfa wrote:
| > People will also need to stay back 70 meters or more until
| the air clears, he says.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Good luck running 70m in a CO2 dense atmosphere. And CO2 hugs
| the ground it does not float away. It will persist in low
| areas for quite a while.
|
| Anyone in the local vicinity would need to carry emergency
| oxygen at all times to be able to get to a safe distance in
| case of rupture. Otherwise it's a death sentence, and not a
| particularly pleasant one as CO2 is the signal that triggers
| the feeling of suffocation.
| cycomanic wrote:
| It's unlikely that the thing will burst and disperse all
| CO2 immediately. It's just slightly higher pressure than
| the outside (that's the whole principle). So you have a
| slow leak of CO2 to the outside. You don't have to run that
| fast (or run at all).
|
| The way I understood the quote, the safety distance is when
| they have to do an emergency deflate (e.g. due to wind).
| The way they calculate the 70 m is probably based on the
| volume and how large of a area you cover until the height
| is low enough that you can still breath.
|
| Generally, because it's leaking to the outside, where there
| is going to be wind it will not stick around for long time
| I suspect.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| The last section of TFA is called "What happens if the dome is
| punctured?". The answer: a release of CO2 equal to about 15
| transatlantic flights. People have to stand back 70m until it
| clears.
|
| It would not be good, but it wouldn't be Bhopal. And there are
| still plenty of factories making pesticides.
| creativeSlumber wrote:
| Comparing it to X flights maybe correct from a greenhouse
| emissions standpoint, but extremely misleading from a safety
| perspective. A jet emits that co2 spread over tens of
| thousands of miles. The problem here is it all pooled in one
| location.
|
| Also that statement of 70 meters seem very off, looking at
| the size of the building. What leads to suffocation is the
| inability to remove co2 from your body rather than lack of
| oxygen, and thus can be life threatening even at 4%
| concentration. It should impact a much much larger area.
| epgui wrote:
| It's a gas in an open space, it diffuses _very_ quickly.
| ben_w wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limnic_eruption
|
| I don't know the safety limits for this quantity, I hope
| the "70 meters" claim was by someone who modelled it
| carefully rather than a gut check.
| apparent wrote:
| Seems like it would depend if there was a small tear or a
| massive breach.
| to11mtm wrote:
| Yep. When I had to fill CO2 tanks at a paintball shop yes
| there were times that I had to open a door (I mean we
| were talking a lot of fills in short time, btw fills had
| to start with draining the tank's existing volume so I
| could zero out the scale) but even indoors a door+fan was
| enough to keep even the nastiest of sale days OSHA
| compliant.
|
| Also a 'puncture' is very different from the gasbag
| mysteriously vanishing from existence; My only other
| thought is that in cold regions (I saw wisconsin
| mentioned in the article) CO2 does not diffuse quite as
| fast and sometimes visibly so...
| Animats wrote:
| > People have to stand back 70m until it clears.
|
| How did they calculate that evacuation distance? CO2 is
| heavy. That little house about 15m from the bubble needs to
| be acquired.
|
| The topography matters. If the installation is in a valley, a
| dome rip could make air unbreathable, because the CO2 will
| settle at the bottom. People have been killed by CO2 fire
| extinguishing systems. It takes a reasonably high
| concentration, a few percent, but that can happen. They need
| alarms and handy oxygen masks.
|
| Installations like this probably will be in valleys, because
| they will be attached to wind farms. The wind turbines go in
| the high spots and the energy storage goes in the low spots.
| jaggederest wrote:
| CO2 is in general less dangerous than inert gases, because we
| have a hypercapnic response - it's a very reliable way to
| induce people to leave the area, quite uncomfortable, and is
| actually one of the ways used to induce a panic attack in
| experimental settings.
|
| If it were, say, argon, it would be much more likely to
| suffocate people, because you don't notice hypoxia the way you
| do hypercapnia. It can pool in basements and kill everyone who
| enters.
|
| That being said it is an enormous volume of CO2, so the
| hypercapnic response in this case may not be sufficient if
| there's nowhere to flee to, as sadly happened in the Lake Nyos
| disaster you cited.
| quotemstr wrote:
| I wonder whether it'd be possible to augment the CO2 with
| something that would make it more detectable visually and
| aromatically, like we do natural gas.
|
| Natural gas is naturally odorless and colorless. Therefore, by
| default, it can accumulate to dangerous levels without anyone
| noticing until too late. We make natural gas safer by making
| stink, and we make it stink by adding trace amounts of
| "odorizers" like thiophane to it.
|
| I wonder whether we could do something similar for CO2 working
| fluid this facility uses --- make it visible and/or "smell-
| able" so that if a leak does happen, it's easier to react
| immediately and before the threshold of suffocation is reached.
| Odorizers are also dirt cheap. Natural gas industry goes
| through tons of the stuff.
| amelius wrote:
| I suppose the people working at the plant will be wearing
| detectors and/or these will be placed at strategic locations
| in the area.
| microtherion wrote:
| Yeah, I was also immediately thinking about the Lake Nyos
| disaster. But that one released something like 200k tons of CO2
| in an instant, whereas this facility has 2k tons, which would
| more likely be released more gradually.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| So it's a compressed air facility but it's using dry CO2 because
| it makes the process easier and CO2 is cheap.
|
| Not a carbon sequestration thing, but will likely fool some
| people into thinking it is.
|
| So the question is, how much does it cost? The article is
| completely silent on this, as expected.
| to11mtm wrote:
| > So the question is, how much does it cost? The article is
| completely silent on this, as expected.
|
| Honestly considering the design overall, I feel like one could
| make a single use science project version of this on a desk
| (i.e. aside from the CO2 recharging part) for under 200 bucks.
| 12oz CO2 tank, some sort of generator and whatever you need to
| spin it that is sealed, tubing, and a reclamation bag for the
| used CO2.
|
| And IMO using CO2 makes the rest of the design cheaper; Blow
| off valves are relatively cheap for this scenario, especially
| because CO2 gas system pressures are fairly low, and there's
| plenty of existing infrastructure around the safety margin. And
| I think even with blow off valves this could be a 'closed'
| system with minimal losses (although that would admittedly add
| to the cost...)
|
| I guess I'm saying is the main unknown is how expensive this
| regeneration system is for the quoted efficiency gains.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| The tanks to hold liquid CO2 will likely be a lot cheaper than
| compressed air tanks because the required pressure is much
| lower. But they are going to loose a _lot_ of energy to cooling
| the gas and reheating the liquid. I would be surprised if the
| round-trip efficiency is higher than 25%.
| alwa wrote:
| They claim 75% efficiency AC-AC [0], and they point out that
| there's no degradation with time. What estimates are you
| using to arrive at the 25% figure?
|
| [0] https://energydome.com/co2-battery/
| upofadown wrote:
| The energy used to liquefy the CO2 is the bulk of the energy
| stored. They don't throw it away afterwards. The the liquid-
| gas transition is why this works so much better than
| compressed air.
| riffraff wrote:
| [delayed]
| laurencerowe wrote:
| > Energy Dome expects its LDES solution to be 30 percent cheaper
| than lithium-ion.
|
| Can see how this could scale up for longer storage fairly cheaply
| but on current trends batteries will have caught up in cost in
| 2-3 years.
| Smoosh wrote:
| Aren't CATL already producing sodium-ion batteries for about
| 60% the cost of lithium-ion for equivalent capacity?
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Yeah. Maybe this tech will have a place for week-long storage
| and be a good buffer for wind power but I hard to see the
| economics working for daily cycling.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| I'm curious if this method could be used along with super
| critical CO2 turbine generators. In other words after extracting
| the energy stored in compressed CO2, if you could then run it
| through a heat exchanger to bring it up to super critical temps
| and pressure and then utilize it as the working fluid in a
| turbine.
| pfdietz wrote:
| We don't need another few-hours storage technology. Batteries are
| going to clobber that. What we need is a storage technology with
| a duration of months. That would be truly complementary to these
| short term storage technologies.
| newyankee wrote:
| Had heard a lot about flow batteries few years back. I am
| guessing they are slowly taking off as well, the trial and
| error that explains their feasibility , need and ability to pay
| for themselves in a market like ERCOT is the key.
|
| This is one place where I think by 2030 a clear no of options
| will be established.
| 2thumbsup wrote:
| A few hours are sometimes enough to start generators when
| renewable energy supply decreases. Obviously, the more capacity
| the better, but costs will increase linearly with capacity in
| most cases.
|
| Pumped-storage hydroelectricity - where it is feasible - is the
| only kind of energy storage close to "months".
| pfdietz wrote:
| The point is that's already a well-served market. These
| competitors are like alternative semiconductors going up
| against silicon.
| ifwinterco wrote:
| You can store energy for months pretty easily as chemical
| energy. Just get some hydrogen, then join it to something
| else, maybe carbon, in the right proportion so it's a liquid
| at room temperature making it nice and easy to both store and
| transport.
|
| Wait a minute...
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