We really need to make some major breakthroughs in superconductors and power storage. We could easily power the planet off solar if we could transfer and store the energy more efficiently.
Indeed, good storage solutions are key for renewables mass scale use. I don’t think we have to even get clever here. For example, China’s been experimenting with molten salt and compressed air storage https://www.power-technology.com/data-insights/top-five-energy-storage-projects-in-china/
Interesting. I don’t know much about the molten salt option but i would be curious to learn how they plan to implement the compressed air storage. Because at least according to my naive understanding i would expect thermal losses to be rather hard to manage.
I mean when you pressurize and depressurize gases there is a temperature change that takes place, and when there is a temperature differential there will be energy lost to the environment. That much i still remember from my undergrad thermodynamics classes.
Me i’ve always been a fan of the idea of storing extra energy by pumping water up into a reservoir behind a dam and releasing it through turbines when you need it, that’s always been the most intuitive solution for me when i’ve thought about the renewable energy storage problem.
Flow batteries I think would be good. At least I think they are called flow batteries. Basically you have two big tanks of some kind of electrolytes and a membrane between them. The liquid can’t mix but electrons can pass through. Depending on weather energy is going in or coming out changes the state of the solutions. There’s no degradation and the battery can be recharged essentially an infinite number of times. It’s just not good for transportation because we’ll, big ass tanks of water. lol
Indeed, China also has projects like this for pumped water energy storage https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/chinas-1bn-bet-on-gravity-to-store-massive-amounts-of-green-energy/2-1-1550122?zephr_sso_ott=FuyYMk
While some approaches like compressed air might be less efficient, the simplicity might still make them worth it. Ultimately, what matters is being able to scale the tech quickly. If you can easily build a bunch of pumped water and compressed air facilities without needing any special minerals like you do for batteries, then the fact that they don’t store energy as efficiently might not really be an issue.
Flow batteries seem very promising, but the chemistry required needs more scale/external funding to be viable.
There were some thermal battery retrofits for coal power plants using carbon and steam that looked interesting in principal, though cost and logistics are not fully solved problems, and the round trip efficiency was rather bad compared to other storage methods.
There were also some molten metal batteries that have been working towards useful scale over the past decade or so. They had cheap and abundant matetial inputs and significantly long charge discharge.
There are many neat options out there. I think researching and building out each as they become viable would help to improve system resiliency and long term viability.
Yeah, they definitely need more research work. I just think it’s a pretty neat idea. Just big tanks of water hanging out underground being batteries. Could build them under buildings, entire blocks of cities etc.
