Compressing air takes energy that can be released when the air decompresses. I read about another storage mechanism that heats vast bins of basaltic pebbles and then generates electricity with that heat. Glad folks are thinking outside the battery box.
Why not? I've seen some cars online that run on compressed air.
Watt’s[sic] the round trip efficiency?
All I know is, compressed air is terribly inefficient in factories and such. High energy conversion losses, both ways.
Yeah ... and Brilliant Light Power has another demo on the 19th and 20th of this month. Should be interesting. Perhaps they will demo a turbine-driven electric generator at 150 kW (electric) this time.
Compressed air storage has been used in Germany for decades. They used abandoned salt mines.
When Musk hits $56 per KWH storage cost, as he projects, and terawatt level of production; that will end compressed air, tidal, flow battery, fusion reactor and other electric generation happy talk.
It is kinetic energy. EXTReMELY expensive to compress air for storage later.
But since ‘we’ can’t build dams and store energy in reservoirs I suppose compressed air is sensible to the green sycophants. It is more expensive and easier for politicians to grift off the system.
When you compress air you generate a lot of heat. If you do not use that heat and/or use the cooling that occurs when you release the air I cannot see how this makes sense. They could be doing this, but their website is very vague and makes no mention of dealing with this big issue.
In my thermodynamics class we calculated the maximum theoretical efficiency of compressed air storage. It was awful. Main problem is it generates enormous amounts of heat when compressing, then absorbs an equal amount when expanding. And that heat is hard to contain.
Maybe they figured out a workaround, but people have tried it for 100 years, and it always fails.
There is a loss of energy each time it is converted. Compressing the air produces heat and takes energy. Loss of air pressure under storage is inevitable. Using the compressed air to turn a turbine that drives a generator more energy loss due to heat. While this method of storage is possible the net loss makes this storage highly inefficient. The windmills themselves capture only about 25% of the winds energy. These green pipe dreams are just pits for taxpayer money and have no possibility of providing the steady reliable and scalable electrify we need to maintain our society.o