More Compressed Gas Storage Case Studies, More Leaking Balloons
More evidence that compressed gas is a niche electricity storage solution
The other day, I published my doorstop assessment of the thermodynamics and operational challenges that limit compressed gas storage solutions, pushing them into the 100 GW of also-ran capacities. In comments in various places, people reminded me of the long-defunct LightSail and the now-getting-press Hydrostor. A bit of followup with some comments and assessments on them seemed worthwhile.
As a reminder, there are only a couple of reasonable-sized compressed air storage solutions actually on grids, and they have been operating for decades without any more being built. The fundamentals of physics, thermodynamics, electrical generation, and compression technologies related to compressed gas solutions haven’t changed because they are absurdly mature. We’ve been compressing gases for energy storage, energy transfer, and multiple other purposes for hundreds of years. Asserting disruptions that change the game in this space is an extraordinary claim and hence requires extraordinary evidence. It’s not forthcoming.
LightSail was one of the Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel acolytes, ‘energy disruptors’ that came to nothing because the grid fundamentally isn’t like the internet…
