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Liquid-air batteries. Big ones. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/worlds-biggest-liquid-air-battery-starts-construction-in-uk https://www.the

by spats1990 5y ago

Liquid-air batteries. Big ones. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/worlds-biggest-liquid-air-battery-starts-construction-in-uk https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/worlds-b... https://highviewpower.com/ https://highviewpower.com/

seibelj 5y ago
I also hope that efficient scale batteries become possible. But if there is an extended deficit with wind / sun then even a battery might not do it. One undeniable advantage of petrochemicals is they work at any time, consistently, and are a solid backup. Maybe we are OK as a society with backup generators being petrochemicals, rather than going nuclear.
- Reason077 5y ago
  > “if there is an extended deficit with wind / sun then even a battery might not do it.” It’s always windy (and sunny) somewhere. The combination of energy storage and grid transmission alleviates intermittency. Chemical batteries are very useful, but far from the only way to store energy.
  - MagnumOpus 5y ago
    It's always sunny somewhere, but if that is on the opposite side of the earth during the night, good luck building grid transmission. It's always windy somewhere, but that also might not be on the same continent as you need it. So if you don't like gas peakers or don't run a nuclear baseload you need to bridge those short non-windy winter days or weeks with batteries. Multiple nation scale terawatt-hour batteries. Which means millions of Tesla li-ion megapacks or millions of pumped hydro plants - which gets expensive and unfeasible real quick as you run out of either the battery raw materials for the former or suitable sites for the latter.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  Fossil fuels store energy like batteries too. You could store excess wind energy as synthetic diesel[0] or gasoline, it's just not commercially viable yet. [0] like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel - the input is water, CO2 and electricity, and as such it's carbon neutral.

seibelj 5y ago

I also hope that efficient scale batteries become possible. But if there is an extended deficit with wind / sun then even a battery might not do it. One undeniable advantage of petrochemicals is they work at any time, consistently, and are a solid backup. Maybe we are OK as a society with backup generators being petrochemicals, rather than going nuclear.

Reason077 5y ago
> “if there is an extended deficit with wind / sun then even a battery might not do it.” It’s always windy (and sunny) somewhere. The combination of energy storage and grid transmission alleviates intermittency. Chemical batteries are very useful, but far from the only way to store energy.
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  It's always sunny somewhere, but if that is on the opposite side of the earth during the night, good luck building grid transmission. It's always windy somewhere, but that also might not be on the same continent as you need it. So if you don't like gas peakers or don't run a nuclear baseload you need to bridge those short non-windy winter days or weeks with batteries. Multiple nation scale terawatt-hour batteries. Which means millions of Tesla li-ion megapacks or millions of pumped hydro plants - which gets expensive and unfeasible real quick as you run out of either the battery raw materials for the former or suitable sites for the latter.
nextaccountic 5y ago
Fossil fuels store energy like batteries too. You could store excess wind energy as synthetic diesel[0] or gasoline, it's just not commercially viable yet. [0] like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel - the input is water, CO2 and electricity, and as such it's carbon neutral.