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Grid-Scale Bubble Batteries Will Soon Be Everywhere (spectrum.ieee.org)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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"This giant bubble on the island of Sardinia holds 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. But the gas wasn’t captured from factory emissions, nor was it pulled from the air. It came from a gas supplier.... "The facility compresses and expands CO2 daily in its closed system, turning a turbine that generates 200 megawatt-hours of electricity, or 20 MW over 10 hours."

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[–] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Wonder how small you can scale these and retain efficiency, at twice the footprint (but I'm guessing a lot more volume) of a lithium grid battery, will we see these replacing home batteries down the line?

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)

    They are talking hectares in this and it looks like the power density is below that of batteries, but its also cheaper per MWh.

    A home long term battery makes a lot of sense, I have thought for a while something that goes from water and the air into methane or even liquid fuel would be highly beneficial as it could run from a generators through the winter and act for long term storage without requiring a turbine.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    The tanks might go underground mitigating (perhaps) the pressure explosion risk as opposed to lithium fire risk, but the honking great tent is an issue. Should have a longer life than Li Ion and be repairable vs somewhat recyclable. At scaled production it could certainly be cheaper, but some of the newer immobile battery chemistries might beat it. Synthesized fuel also makes a lot of sense. We shall see. What certainly makes sense is microgrids and power self-sufficiency.

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