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[Richard230]

Who needs a battery electrical storage system when you have hot bricks around?   

[TheRan]

Reminds me of the solar farms that use a massive array of mirrors to heat molten salt (I think) for storing energy. I do find alternative methods of energy storage interesting. Another one I saw (just a concept) used the energy to raise gigantic concrete blocks into a tower using a crane, then when the energy was needed it would lower them back down using regenerative braking on the crane. Not very practical but fairly creative and would be cool to watch.

[Specter]

Another one was pumping water up into a storage shed of some sorts, whether it was a lake, a levy or just a high towar, then when needed let the water out to run a turbine.  Not the most efficient ways to store energy, but I guess would work in a pinch.  But one has to ask, can't the energy be used in better ways?

Why not a cold bank, freeze bricks, and then say a big refrigeration plant, for storing meat or something, run fluid thru the cold bricks to get cold, th en the walls of the freezer to keep the stuff cold at night, while the sun recharges it during the day with solar powering the reefers to re cool it.  But what about those drizzly weeks we get/

The biggest question is how much does all this cost?  Especially compared to just using electricity, or getting a regular battery or supercap.  ROI on life cycles type thing?

All this stuff sounds cool but is it feasable? Global warming is BS just like the Carbon crap is but they will never stop using it to separate fools from their money.

Im selling you a house, and you MUST have this poofty stuff on it. It WILL cost you an extra 100k, but don't worry! You can finance it with your house and it's only an extra 200 a month... for 30 years.  you can't always pass on the price of your dreams to your customers.

Aaron

[ESokoloff]

Another one was pumping water up into a storage shed of some sorts, whether it was a lake, a levy or just a high towar, then when needed let the water out to run a turbine.  Not the most efficient ways to store energy, but I guess would work in a pinch.  But one has to ask, can't the energy be used in better ways?

Why not a cold bank, freeze bricks, and then say a big refrigeration plant, for storing meat or something, run fluid thru the cold bricks to get cold, th en the walls of the freezer to keep the stuff cold at night, while the sun recharges it during the day with solar powering the reefers to re cool it.  But what about those drizzly weeks we get/

The biggest question is how much does all this cost?  Especially compared to just using electricity, or getting a regular battery or supercap.  ROI on life cycles type thing?

All this stuff sounds cool but is it feasable? Global warming is BS just like the Carbon crap is but they will never stop using it to separate fools from their money.

Im selling you a house, and you MUST have this poofty stuff on it. It WILL cost you an extra 100k, but don't worry! You can finance it with your house and it's only an extra 200 a month... for 30 years.  you can't always pass on the price of your dreams to your customers.

Aaron

LADWP has been using water storage peak demand generators for more then half a century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castaic_Power_Plant

A few decades ago large building/facility thermal storage was a thing (chill or freeze large quantities of water during off peak energy to be used for cooling during peak energy periods) but I think it fell out out favor due to operational issues outweighing savings.

[Motoproponent]

There are several of those molten salt farms around in NV. I was having a discussion (drinking in a bar while on a road trip) with some locals and they said the molten salt runs a steam turbine. They said that the salt holds enough heat to keep the turbine going for days in the event of night time or prolonged overcast conditions.

Funny thing is that you can see the "sunspot" on the tower where the light is focused, but you can't see the actual "death ray"....until I bird flies into it and gets instantly turned into a pile of  toasted carbon that falls to the ground.

[Specter]

The molten salt, some nuclear reactors use sodium as a coolant as well. It is basically a shell and tube type heat exchanger, it puts the heat into water which then turns to steam to run a steam turbine. 

Yeah, you wouldn't be able to see the heat, it's like in an oven, until you are very close to it and might see the distortion in the air around it from the hot air rising, much like on a road and mirages.  We see the same thing with our smoke stacks on the turbine generators, the exhaust coming out can be very hot, and once in a while a dumb bird will fly over the stack and end up on the ground a charred mess on the other side.

I could have swore that most birds can sense the IR from the heat, not necessarily see it, but sense it somehow, which is why they are not always flying thru them, not sure on that though. If I am wrong, Id be curious to learn why they don't constantly go thru, they DO avoid the stacks that's for sure!

Aaron

[Curt]

All articles like that are super fluffy, so the context and spin must be taken into account. Often, a null concept depicted with fancy graphics is super duper ridiculously dreamily fluffy with all sorts of buy-in from allegedly respectable institutions.

It's believable that storage of heat could be done with 98% efficiency, as long as that heat is then used directly in a factory or home, and not used to generate electricity. If it will be used to generate electricity, it must be cheaper and/or smaller than an equivalent battery.

Everyone knows that in a power outage, a refrigerator will be OK for 12 to 24 hours if you keep the door closed. I could see a refrigerator designed with a large thermal mass that only needs to run the compressor for a few hours each day, and the rest of the time only needs a few small fans. But electric companies, despite all their airing of grievances with consumer power production, don't charge less during peak solar.

I would say that no matter what storage technology we get, we must maintain sufficient (full) production capacity (natural gas backup) to carry on in case of extended periods (days, weeks, months) of low production due to weather, natural disaster, war, etc.

BTW, gravity storage (the cranes with bricks fluff) is trivial to debunk. Back-of-the-envelope calculations (mass * gravity * height) easily show that very little energy is stored, even with truly massive bricks and heights. Hydro storage only works because it does the same thing with a BILLION times more weight, and even then, it's incredibly inefficient and only suitable for conserving small amounts in situations where there is massive overproduction.

[ESokoloff]

……………

Hydro storage only works because it does the same thing with a BILLION times more weight, and even then, it's incredibly inefficient and only suitable for conserving small amounts in situations where there is massive overproduction.

Green Hydrogen production (via Electrolysis) could take advantage of such over production periods.  This would yield a necessary commodity.

LADWP is planning on producing Hydrogen via Electrolysis from recycled waste water.

https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2022/22-0255_misc_2_5-5-2022.pdf

[Specter]

still putting way more energy into it than they ever would recover back when converting back to electricity.  Not to mention the inherent danger.  Everyone cries when a lithium battery turns into a blow torch, what do they think a hydrogen tank is going to when it's breached?

Aaron

[ESokoloff]

still putting way more energy into it than they ever would recover back when converting back to electricity.  Not to mention the inherent danger.  Everyone cries when a lithium battery turns into a blow torch, what do they think a hydrogen tank is going to when it's breached?

Aaron

I think you have to realize that certain massive vehicles (trains, jumbo jets, cargo hauling boats, etc.) will need to run on green hydrogen & that (green) hydrogen will have to come from somewhere. 
Im guessing that ultimately the price of green hydrogen will be high enough to justify producing it via off peak electricity periods. 

[Specter]

why not alcohol?  It's waste gasses are not too bad.  The whole CO2 BS needs to go away.  I can get the not wanting hydrocarbons because of the nox and sox but CO2 is a given for even you being alive.

What if they had a barge, a large ocean going one, it had a lower profile, hauled stuff, it's entire deck top was solar panels.  Morning time, it charged up a little bit at night using wave action, to lift an anchor, then used the panels to push a motor on a propeller to drive it towards whichever destination it was heading.  when night came, it dropped anchor to sit where it ended up at, unless the prevailing winds would ultimately push it towards it's end destination even further, at which time it'd just keep drifting naturally..  While sitting it could use wave generators to make electricity by the up and down on the waves to charge a battery.  come next day, do it all over again,  during bad weather / cloudy days, it'd just charge it's battery, you could put wind generators on it too, not stupid tall ones but smaller ones along the deck to gather any wind that might be going too.  Perhaps every 10 miles or so you could have a small platform it could anchor / moor to, like stopping points, or every 50 miles, whatever works, if needed or for emergency docking.   have enough of these on a planned route to put these barges between countries on planned shipping routes.  You could have enough of them running that if it took a few days more to get somewhere, no big deal.  It'd essentially burn zero fuel except what it made on it's own.

when it gets wherever, unload, put new stuff to go back and send it back.  put a few dozen people on it, or even just a few with some rockets to fight off pirates, a keg of beer, some weed, a box of doritos, and you are good to go !  Throw in a fishing pole and they are loyal to the end!  Catch dinner, and perhaps some extra fish to sell when they get back in port, a bit of a trip bonus!

Hell sign me up, Ill be the first one to test pilot the HMS UnicornPhart. 
Aaron

[ESokoloff]

why not alcohol?  It's waste gasses are not too bad.  The whole CO2 BS needs to go away.  I can get the not wanting hydrocarbons because of the nox and sox but CO2 is a given for even you being alive.

What if they had a barge, a large ocean going one, it had a lower profile, hauled stuff, it's entire deck top was solar panels.  Morning time, it charged up a little bit at night using wave action, to lift an anchor, then used the panels to push a motor on a propeller to drive it towards whichever destination it was heading.  when night came, it dropped anchor to sit where it ended up at, unless the prevailing winds would ultimately push it towards it's end destination even further, at which time it'd just keep drifting naturally..  While sitting it could use wave generators to make electricity by the up and down on the waves to charge a battery.  come next day, do it all over again,  during bad weather / cloudy days, it'd just charge it's battery, you could put wind generators on it too, not stupid tall ones but smaller ones along the deck to gather any wind that might be going too.  Perhaps every 10 miles or so you could have a small platform it could anchor / moor to, like stopping points, or every 50 miles, whatever works, if needed or for emergency docking.   have enough of these on a planned route to put these barges between countries on planned shipping routes.  You could have enough of them running that if it took a few days more to get somewhere, no big deal.  It'd essentially burn zero fuel except what it made on it's own.

when it gets wherever, unload, put new stuff to go back and send it back.  put a few dozen people on it, or even just a few with some rockets to fight off pirates, a keg of beer, some weed, a box of doritos, and you are good to go !  Throw in a fishing pole and they are loyal to the end!  Catch dinner, and perhaps some extra fish to sell when they get back in port, a bit of a trip bonus!

Hell sign me up, Ill be the first one to test pilot the HMS UnicornPhart. 
Aaron

Since we’ve entered the silly zone I’ll propose good old fashion teleportation as a means of future transportation. 

[Specter]

As long as you don't teleport into a brick wall and your whole party is killed.

Aaron