5 ms·
> However, to store 360 Wh of potential electrical energy, the system requires a storage reservoir of 18 m3, the size of a small room measuring 3x3x2 metres. Th
by mabbo 8y ago
> However, to store 360 Wh of potential electrical energy, the system requires a storage reservoir of 18 m3, the size of a small room measuring 3x3x2 metres. The authors note that “although the tank size appears very large, it still makes sense for applications in rural areas”.
This would light a home for an hour, with LED bulbs and careful usage. And all it requires is a room-sized storage tank.
So if I wanted something that ran my house all night, I'd need a storage tank larger than said house.
- hedora 8y agoI thought this too, but read the rest of the article. Spoiler alert: State of the art is 30x better
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- test6554 8y agoI picture Rick Moranis operating a large space-based vacuum cleaner.
- sandworm101 8y agoOr you could liquify the air. That would make the storage much more energy-dense but introduces all sorts of practical/heat issues. People have played around with running cars on liquified nitrogen. The air conditioners probably worked well.
- bdamm 8y agoSteam power, in a sense. Now I kind of want to build one, although the crash scenario is just as terrifying as with a hot car. Hmm.
- reaperducer 8y agoThere are clubs and people all over the United States (often in rural areas) dedicated to building home-made steam powered machines and vehicles. Unfortunately, these real-life steampunks (not cosplay kids) usually also would rather spend time working on their projects and not documenting them, so there's not very much on the internet compared with the number of people active in the hobby. Keep an eye out at county fairs and small town carnivals and rodeos. They usually show up.
- beat 8y agoDepends on the tradeoff. The tl;dr of the article is that there's a tradeoff between pressure and efficiency. You can store at higher pressures in smaller vessels, but it's much less efficient. Low pressure (larger vessels) can be extremely efficient. In between, there are hacks to increase efficiency using heat exchangers and the like. Beyond that, this is being pushed in the article as a rural/off-grid approach. For urban residential, it makes a lot more sense to centralize storage and run houses off a regular grid, than to try to make each house an independent entity. In the medium run, we need to shift the grid itself from the current baseline+peak model to a solar+storage model (rolling wind into this), with distributed metering on the storage grid. Capture solar/wind power when the sun shines and the wind blows, and sell it when consumption outstrips supply, with pricing set dynamically on a distributed network. Once you have that, for on-grid purposes, we'll probably see a diverse world of storage - car batteries, compressed air, industrial battery sites, water storage, thermal storage, etc.
- jandrese 8y agoFor home use you also have to consider that you're basically making a bomb every time you store energy in the thing.
- agumonkey 8y agofew mechanical engineer~ youtubers said so many times; compressed gas seems less dangerous than water but compression is terribly dangerous
- jandrese 8y agoThis doesn't make sense at all. High pressure water can be dangerous for sure, but water based energy storage doesn't use high pressure... It's all about pumping the water uphill and then letting the water flow back down through the pump to recover the energy. At worst your house gets flooded because the containment vessel failed. Worst case with compressed air is a total disintegration of the tank, the room it's in, and the rest of the house along with the occupants.
- agumonkey 8y agomy english is flawed, I was trying to say that. Water is not pressurized but feel scarier than air for most people, so they go care free around compressed gases.
- jcranendonk 8y agoWater is pressurized. However, it is not compressed. That's an important distinction.
- agumonkey 8y agoI'm fuzzy and since water is incompressible, "pressure" may not have the same meaning on water than on other substance
- 8y ago
- mrfusion 8y agoMy four lb lawnmower batter stores 120wh. Quite the contrast.
- pg314 8y ago> This would light a home for an hour, with LED bulbs and careful usage. Do you have the equivalent of 50 LED bulbs (60W equivalent [1]) burning at a time? Do you consider that careful usage? [1] https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Classic-Glass-Non-Dimmable-Light/dp/B0747SPKSX https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Classic-Glass-Non-Dimmable-Li...
- swebs 8y agoAn LED light bulb uses 11 watts. You must be lighting your home with 33 bulbs if that only lasts you an hour. If you only use 4 bulbs, that will last over 8 hours.
- F_r_k 8y agoMy home as got many 3W led bulbs for small lamps. 7W is the norm