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Pumped-storage hydro (the cheapest and generally most practical gravity battery) is currently responsible for almost all grid-scale energy storage worldwide. I
by amalcon 4y ago
Pumped-storage hydro (the cheapest and generally most practical gravity battery) is currently responsible for almost all grid-scale energy storage worldwide. I don't think it's fair to say it's not getting attention.
What's not getting attention is the use of solids for this. The main reasons are that you'd like to re-use most of the infrastructure of the hydroelectric dam you wanted anyway, and that liquids make for simpler engineering in these cases.
- toss1 4y agoWhat is interesting about a quick look at the Heindl Energy solution is that it looks like basically pumped hydro. The difference is that the water is sitting in a large cylindrical space underground with a large (minimum 100m / 300ft diameter) rock piston sitting on top of the water. Eliminates the need for mountainous terrain with a high lake-like geometry to pump the water up out of the gravity well — they can build this in the flatlands
- narrator 4y agoI just had a wonderful and possibly stupid idea. How about pumped hydro with a huge storage tank on the surface and then another huge one at the bottom of a cavern made by an underground nuke test? The main problem of course is that the underground cavern is in the middle of nowhere and radioactive. Maybe you could remediate the pollution in the cavern by filtering the actinides while pumping the water around?