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Houston startup plans to store wind energy underground
- c-smile 9y ago"Apex will need a small amount of natural gas to heat the air it compresses to maximize turbine output." As far as I understand they need to heat up the turbine as air (a gas) cools down upon (adiabatic) expansion. And while accumulating / compressing air in ground lacunae, pumping it into the storage, we are just heating up the ground. Am I right in my understanding of the process thermodynamic ?
- rdiddly 9y agoSounds correct to me. It sounds like they're hoping the compressive heating effects will be dispersed through a large enough volume to be negligible. Whereas the expansive cooling will be concentrated at the point of exit.
- ams6110 9y agoPV = nRT
- samcheng 9y agoYou are correct, the article has a typo and should state 'decompresses' instead of 'compresses.'
- Black-Plaid 9y ago> and the system can fill the cavern with air while generating electricity. You can't charge and discharge a battery at the same time. Umm, does this seem as pointless to everyone everyone else as me?
- Dylan16807 9y agoIt's a very strange statement. There's no reason to do it, and you can easily do it anyway with your multiple batteries.
- samcheng 9y agoThe article, and the comments here, are missing an important fact that really helps clarify how these compressed-air energy storage systems work: These systems use the compressed air as input into a natural gas turbine. You can think of the underground storage as a giant intercooler that stores the output of the first (compressor) half of a natural gas turbine, and then feeds that compressed air into the second (combustion) half. See a good explanation here: http://energystorage.org/compressed-air-energy-storage-caes http://energystorage.org/compressed-air-energy-storage-caes
- taylorhou 9y agoGlad to see something about houston on HN regardless of what the startup is doing! Woot woot