So what do you think about liquid air energy storage? If you liked this video, be sure to check out, "Supercapacitors explained - the future of energy storage?" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--7T-6XdiRTw.html
Underwater CAES is also interesting. You get the dual benefit of the weight of the water acting as your pressure vessel, and the benefit of water acting as a heat sink. The slower you charge / discharge, the closer it is to isothermal. www.renewableenergyworld.com/2014/09/16/underwater-compressed-air-storage-fantasy-or-reality/
As soon as you mentioned using power for phase changing and generating power off of changing phases back from a generator I knew the Efficiency and yield loss would be ridiculous. I would also assume the maintenance, manpower and scientific specialties needed to maintain the liquid energy plant would be very significantly greater than that of a hardline batterybank plant. The CEO talked about miliwatt per dollar efficiency being the efficiency that matters. But I think that still puts them on the short end of the economic stick. Perhaps it makes sense for a major metropolitan city where another massive plant fully staffed isnt as big a deal as other places.
I'm in Manchester UK, there's one a few miles from here. Another advantage is that the engineering and construction skills are not too different from the oil and gas industry, so skills can be carried over as we phase those out.
Yeah. I only really see upsides for this tech. Like you said, transfer of skills. Off the shelf components. Dial-able efficiency. Scalable. Cost competitive. Geographically mobile. Team a large plant like this with a battery farm and you have a perfect combination. Power sources (solar, wind) feed the LAES system. LAES system feeds the batter farm which supplies the millisecond response necessary for the grid. The battery farm would only need to be big enough to cover the gap until the LAES system can catch up... and boom goes the dynamite.
Sorry for nitpicking, Matt, but again: "rare earth metals" ("rare earth elements", actually, by IUPAC) does not simply mean "rare" or "expensive" or "difficult to procure" metals. The term is precisely defined as denoting lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium - certainly not lithium, cobalt nor nickel. None of those are used in batteries, AFAIK, although some _are_ used in permanent magnet motors (and generators), usually neodymium. Perhaps that's the source of seemingly endless misuse of the term.
Thank you. I am tired of the same rare-earth-myth being misused and spreading misinformation over and over and over...! At this point it is not nitpicking, it is a concession that people just believe things without questioning them not bothering with a quick lookup if that information has some validity to it or whether it is pure bogus or something in-between.
@@d1oftwins Yes, talking science and technology requires precision. If one is going to use technical jargon of a particular field, one should use it correctly.
4:46 Also on the nitpicking front the air isn't frozen, it's condensed. Frozen air would be a solid but you clearly said it's stored as a liquid. You'd have to get down to -210°C (for the Nitrogen) and -218°C (Oxygen) for it to freeze.
@@EscapeMCP Yeah, again "loose" use of words that has no place in videos like this one. Frozen air would be a nice "reservoir of coldness" (heat sink), but that's not what is needed here. (Frozen nitrogen is sometimes used as coolant in space-based telescopes - lighter per energy absorption capability than liquid helium, and much simpler than active refrigeration systems.)
Yes. You'll not stop it of course. People & groups have decided what's simple catch phrases for the masses for various things and they are soon promulgated, ingrained and thus the confusion will be permanent. It annoys me too but I realize that that's Life.
I knew specialized batteries like this were possible but I've been having this thought in my head about the potential of cryogenic storage and this video helped me realize what I've been daydreaming about. So cool to see companies providing this as a clean air solution.
@@ronwesilen4536 Sorry to butt in but I can't help myself atm. Black Lagoon, Trigun, Overlord, Beastars, Oddtaxi, Vampire Hunter D, One Punch Man, Cowboy Bepop, Mushishi, FLCL, Great Teacher Onizuka, Hellsing, Serial Experiments Lain, Ookami to Koushinryou (Spice and Wolf), Escaflowne, .Hack//Sign, Last Exile, Eureka Seven, Kino and Tegami Bachi.
I see the energy storage problem the same way I see the computer storage problem. You have to have a layered approach; you would never sell a computer with a CPU and no RAM or hard-drive storage would you? Of course not. Nor should we rely on L-ion batteries for our energy needs. You have to have multiple technologies all working on the same grid with varying levels of capacity and speed (or ramp-up time/discharge rate). I love the idea of liquid air energy storage for all the reason you mentioned: It has a very large capacity, scales well, and can be built just about anywhere. Couple it with a battery bank, a solar/wind farm, and maybe some other technologies and you've got the recipe for a seriously robust grid.
JOSH - LION is too Valuable and Expensive for GRID Storage , which is WHY TESLA is going to LFP , IRON is a Cheap, Recyclable and Plentiful materiel. LFP batteries are Heavier , but Weight is a NON Issue in GRID storage.
I live in Madison County, Indiana. We currently have a large number of solar farms, with more on the way, and the northern half of the county is covered with wind generators. We’ve been good about jumping on new renewable energy sources and I really hope to see this in my community. The coal generators are dropping like flies, maybe someday we can ditch gas power as well.
@@bocadelcieloplaya3852 Often when overall solar output is lower wind output is higher. Each grid/region needs to determine the best mix for their weather conditions.
Liquid air energy storage - great idea & great presentation (as usual, thanks). Regarding response time of this tech - why can't you also have a quick air battery system response by pairing lithium ion batteries with "air batteries"? How much lithium ion storage is needed? Answer - The size of the lithium ion battery to pair with an air battery is based on the time it takes for the air battery system to respond (how long for the air valves to open and for the gas turbine to spin up) combine this with the rate of energy you need to pump into the grid to compute the size of the lithium ion battery pack. So, I am guessing that it only would take a minute or so for the air battery to respond, so a relatively small lithium ion battery pack would fill this time gap. Once the air system is spun up, it can provide the main power and recharge the lithium ion pack. This is not a new concept. Electrical engineers have placed capacitors in electrical circuits since the dawn of circuit design to provide near instantaneous short term power to meet the millisecond to millisecond fluctuating power demands of, for example, a speaker amplifier circuit. In short, you can have your cake and eat it too, NBD.
I think that's another reason why they refer to lithium storage as a "sibling" more than a competitor. The whole idea is to have a minimum lithium base storage that can work within a moment's notice on sudden demand spikes, and then the liquid air storage can do the full day storage passively in the background. This combo minimizes the need for mass lithium systems, while still being able to respond quickly to urgent needs. The main trouble is if the sudden requirement for immediate power is too high for the lithium pack to handle, so the question is where is the desired balance point between the Lithium / liquid-air ratio.
The final cost of the energy could probably be lowered by combining the system with the fractionating technology to strip out some of the more valuable products such as liquid oxygen and liquid argon. Because you would already have the liquefaction facility, one of the costlier parts of an overall separation plant you would be creating profitable side products at perhaps lower cost.
Thats actually quite clever. I dont know the details myself but it does look like a fractionning sistem would be a relatively easy-cheap implementation into their system. Heck, at those scales you might even get a decent amount of helium from it.
and why not bother to take the co2 out of the liquid air too? you can have all in one. Energy storage, oxygen/argon "production" and even a carbon dioxide capture. Everything on the same facility
@@v44n7 You are exactly correct. I focused on oxygen and argon as the most plentiful but there is no reason that I can see to limit it to those elements.
Matt, you're only 83 days from 1M subs! I've been watching your videos for the last 3 weeks and based on your growth rate I've noticed, you'll hit 1M subs around August 2022 this year. Great work!
This is a world class video. As an chemist/engineer I think it will appeal to tech and non-tech folks alike. One thing that has enormous appeal is the system safety. In a worst case scenario the primary release is air. Keep those high quality videos coming.
Yes agree this really appealed to me. Coming from Norway I was kind of fan of hydroelecricity but when I saw the enormous environmental damage by a hydroplant near where I live now in India I have my doubts. Using air however seemed very intersting. Never heard about it..
So what did the $/MWh cost boil down to? How does it compare to current grid scale Lithium Ion battery technology. I love your channel but this just came across as a fluff piece without real analysis and numbers.
"Using industry-standard economic methodologies, it has been determined that the VPS Cycle has the lowest Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of any power storage system available today. VPS’s LCOE is typically $125-$135/MWh versus $200-$400/MWh for compressed air energy storage (CAES); $185-$275/MWh for pumped hydro; and $350- $750/MWh for lithium ion batteries (in each case assuming a power “charging” price of $50/MWh). VPS’s LCOE is also lower than simple-cycle peaker plants ($220- $300/MWh)." I found here: www.expansion-energy.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/POWER-GEN__-Expansion_Energy_LLC-__VPS_Cycle_LAES_Technical_Paper_-_FINAL_DRAFT.33873916.pdf I don't know if this is a reliable source.
@@G11713 I think it's liquid air energy storage (LAES) using the VPS cycle (Vandor's Power Storage Cycle). Found this link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140700719304748
Around $100 per MWh. Combined with $40/MWh wind, this is dispatchable power that is price competitive with natural gas peakers ($150/MWh) www.rechargenews.com/transition/liquid-air-storage-offers-cheapest-route-to-24-hour-wind-and-solar/2-1-635666
I am all supportive for this idea. Lithium ion batteries aren’t recyclable after a number of years being used to store the power. So, the only point is weather they keep focusing on this liquid battery air or make lithium ion recyclable thus cheaper energy for air and solar power.
You are often confusing power and energy. I hear you say “megawatt” for energy storage. That’s like saying the grocery store is “5 mph” away, when you mean “5 miles” away. I know this is driving many of your viewers crazy and lots of people comment on it. To further beat a dead horse, power is an instantaneous measure of energy flow. A kW can’t do any work; it’s not a unit of energy. Just like 60mph won’t get you anywhere unless you travel at that speed for a millisecond, an hour or a week. Then you’ll have travelled some fraction of a mile. Or multiple (or thousands) of miles. That’s analogous to energy.
Larry, well put,. It's an important distinction I see abused frequently and wonder sometimes if it isn't done intentionally to exaggerate the attributes. BTW, my alternative extrapolation: "This barbell weighs 650 calories"
Hibridised with high grade heat turbines the output is greater than sum significantly. This increases value of imported cyrogenic fluids to cool reactor steam. Nitrogen is an open loop flow booster for micronuclear reducing number needed.
👍 domestic uranium to heat imported from canary geothermal LIQUID air is the sterling engine fodder aspiration deltamaxing 🍵 totter. Fission is the catalyst DUH.
I call the bluff! Cooling tanks WHERE right DESIGN problem was water NOT LIQUID air being in there AND emergency use ONLY. THE superheated nitrogen plasma'ED even CAN COOL RADIANTLY AFTER FINAL TURBINE. MULTISTAGE TURBINES FISSION REHEATING OF WORKING NITROGEN BETWEEN EACH THAT DESIGN IS THIS MILLENIA'S ELECTRON PUSHER 🍑
Thanks for showing this Matt. We have a plant that is being built in Manchester UK. Let's hope that the adoption of Cryo increases and can be integrated with other storage methods.
You do an excellent job of explaining technology to a wide audience--something that becomes more critically important with each new "indistinguishable from magic" technology. Keep up the good work!
The channel "Just have a think" posted a video about this months ago. Its a cool idea but i'm not sure its worth it. Solar and wind are going to struggle to meet power demands as is without having these losses in efficiency. Nuclear power is still the best option.
As Javier pointed out, it's all about the money in the end. Utilities are following the path of cheapest per MWh price. Nuclear isn't the cheapest option out there ... but it's a good option depending on the situation.
@@UndecidedMF My argument is that solar isn't going to work anywhere outside of desert climates like California. If you look at places like Seattle they receive 1/6th the amount of sunlight in December vs July. This is an extreme example but its very common in northern regions to receive far less sunlight in winter than summer. So if you build enough solar panels to meet demand in summer than you will have a huge shortage in winter, and if you build enough to meet demand in winter you will have a huge surplus in summer. Also consider regions further north like Alaska which has even more extreme variations in sunlight, but also has to deal with extreme cold and snow. Another thing to consider is that solar requires 1000 times the land area of nuclear power which means that to meet demand you would have to cover such a vast amount of land it would be more destructive to the environment than it would be beneficial. Then there's the waste problem as well. This is especially problematic in areas that are both densely populated and mountainous like Japan. Japan doesn't have anywhere near enough flat land to install solar panels. Nuclear power works anywhere 24/7 365 days a year. Its constant, dispactable and very energy dense. Nuclear power is the future. I know renewables are "romantic" but its simply not feasible.
@@Name-kd5jj you have targeted solar pretty specifically here to make a point, but you have ignored the fact that solar is not the only renewable energy source out there. There is on/off shore wind, geo thermal, tidal and good old fashioned hydro etc. My point is you choose the energy generation method that is most suitable for the location and if that is nuclear then thats fine but its not the be all end all of energy generation and pretending it is won't change that.
@@slanahesh Yes wherever renewables make sense i say go for it if its financially practical and doesn't disrupt the environment. Either way nuclear power will probably be present everywhere due to solar and wind's intermittency. Geothermal, tidal and hydro only work in certain areas but have the advantage of being more constant and reliable than solar and wind. So i say in desert areas go for solar because they're empty( no deforestation to install solar), sunny and usually sparsely populated. Japan may be able to use geothermal, tidal and wind, but given the extreme population density they will still have to rely on nuclear. I never said nuclear was the miracle fix for all energy, wherever we can install renewables to increase grid efficiency i say go for it. But renewables are not going to be the do-it-all solution either.
Its a cool tech that has been around for a long while but never had a reason energy storage application because of the pervasiveness of the oil and fossil fuels. Now with the awareness of climate change and vast intermittent renewable energy sources this tech can finally come to fruition.
I've travelled the energy exhibitions in Japan for a long time. They did something I thought was equally ingenious. They let all they power plants run on 75% capability all the time. They then use their mountains to pump water onto, storing potential energy, at night when the consumption is low.. When they need the extra energy during the day, they let the water run back down through hydro turbines.
It is a very good idea. As indicated in the video, there will be ways to improve the efficiency by adding more complex structures at risk of facility cost.
Storing energy for home use. There is a guy in New Jersey who put together a solar system that when there was access power produced, it made hydrogen. Yes, hydrogen. It was stored in a low pressure tank (propane tank) and oxygen from the process was stored in another tank. When the house needs electricity the hydrogen produces it for him. It's in his backyard. It took a while from what I understand to get township approval but it works
Matt great video. I may say to your question of why we are not using that technology, maybe we need more people like you who chares tis information in a way that is easy to understand and so obvious that one must need to say as well -" we need to transition right now". Thank you for great contribution to the whole community.
It may seem like a crazy idea but what if you paired these energy storage plants with traditional power plants. The storage could use the waste heat from burning natural gas/nuclear as the heat for the expansion of the gas. Then you would not need to invest in any heat storage bringing down costs considerably. Smaller versions might be worth it even with no renewables involved. They would allow them to construct smaller plants because you could size them by average usage and not by peak usage. Basically negating the need for traditional peaker plants anyway.
To me this seems like the first grid scale option that will actually be viable. Sure, Li-ion is great, but it's expensive and battery cell production isn't large enough to provide the energy storage solutions that we need.
I watched a presentation they did, and doing the calculations for new york alone, they found that this tech would supply about 3/4 of all the energy storage requirements for a 100% renewable grid with batteries supplying the other fourth (including existing pumped hydro). that would still be tens of gigawatt hours of battery storage and 100s of gigawatthours of LAES. Both work together, batteries because they have better efficency and these because they cost much less to operate
@prerunnerwannabe Said, "... battery cell production isn't large enough..." The li-Ion cell production is being scaled up to be mass produced in the gigafactories that Tesla is building right now. The cell production lines are being optimized for maximum production at minimum costs. All of the cells Tesla makes will be used in their products but their Megapacks will be installed in utility scale battery storage projects and their Powerwalls will be installed in tens of thousands of homes. Tesla is calling their plants gigafactories but they will make more than just giga, they will be making tera quantities. Their gigafactory being built in Austin, TX sits on 2500 acres of land and they have plans to grow 50% per year, year on year. Tesla's solar and battery storage business will be bigger than the automobile business.
@@acmefixer1 Yes, I'm aware of Tesla's ambitions, but expecting that lithium ion batteries will be the only solution for grid storage is just short sited. We need all viable forms of energy storage to be aggressively pursued if we actually want to transition to a renewable power mix.
Exactly. Liquid air has the best potential to scale quickly. It may take decades for Li-ion to scale to the production capacity liquid air might achieve in just a few years. Paired with new gigawatt scale solar PV coming in at less than $0.02 / kWh in favorable locations, a storage loss of 30% to 40% is economically viable. Curtailment of PV generated power only serves to bolster the economic case for liquid air storage. Even with a 50% storage efficiency loss, a rated $0.02 per kWh solar system now becomes a $0.04 per kWh system. That is an economic, "So What". $0.04 per kWh is great wholesale price for electricity that can be produced to meet demand 24/7. Of course, the operational cost and amortized design and install cost of the liquid air system has to be added to the $0.04 per kWh. Therein lies the rub in all this. Setting aside input energy, how much does it cost to design, build, and operate a liquid air storage system?
You say pumped Hydro storage is geo specific (since it needs elevation difference). Here is flat Denmark (highest hill is 170 meter high) we're working on sandstorage. Not thermal storage, but water in a big bladder tank, buried under 10s of meters of sand. The water pressure then lifts the sand, thus making it works like the water was pumped up high.
Great video. You really dialed in and captured my thoughts and sentiments on the merits of liquid air energy storage. The merits of the science, technology, materials, and costs almost speak for themselves. I would definitely like to see some more investigation and follow up on the unanswered questions. Some suggested topics for follow up: It seems like a liquid air storage system should be co-located and symbiotically paired with the intermittent energy source (solar / wind) supplying the liquid air plant with power. I could imagine a fully integrated gigawatt scale solar / liquid air plant that is designed, engineered, marketed, and sold under a common brand as a turn key product supplying power 24/7 365 days a year. The most obvious choice would be the acquisition and merger of a liquid air storage company with a gigawatt scale solar or wind company. However, such a merger might prove hostile to existing business relationships with the electric utility industry which would likely prefer to see liquid air energy storage technology killed in the cradle than as to begin competing with it for baseload market share. It would be great if you could score an interview with a large established solar or wind company to explore their thoughts on pairing their product with liquid air energy storage. Location. Location. Location. Expand the focus beyond the merits of the technology and its associated costs to grid access. A liquid air system dumping megawatts of power into the grid would likely need to be co-located next to an existing power plant with grid connection infrastructure or next to an abandoned power plant with existing grid connection infrastructure. Cases in point, In 2003 "First Solar" co-located a utility scale 480 kW PV solar system adjacent to the coal fired Springerville Generating Station operated by Tucson Electric Power in Springerville, Arizona. Tesla's new Moss Landing megapack battery storage system is being installed at the former natural gas fired Moss Landing Power Plant site. Examine the likely regulatory hurdles and challenges to connect a new independent wildcat 24/7 baseload power source to the grid. The regulatory burdens and financial costs may be insurmountable in the US. The utility and the broader utility lobbying industry would immediately go to the mattresses to tie up and protect any potential threat to existing baseload generating capacity. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, the first and easiest thing would be to deny property access, easements, and permits necessary to connect to the grid. A small grid connected project in a foreign country might be the better pace to start rather than a predictable hostile engagement with the US electric utility industry.
This has been my counter argument to people who like to argue that the production of lithium batteries negates the environmental benefit of going all electric. The technology has issues but we still need to advance beyond fossil fuels and innovations like this were bound to happen eventually.
Pairing this tech with Batteries would be great. Batteries kick on first to supply instant power, and then switch over to liquid air when available. Really like the way you explain new tech. Keep it up.
60% to 70% efficiency, aka 30~40% loss, still sounds pretty damning for a utility scale storage process. Most batteries and gravity-based storage methods can reach 90% or above.
IMHO the efficiency of storage becomes much less important, when abundant cheap renewable sources are available to recharge it. It just needs to be able to deliver net-output cheaper than other medium-term on-demand sources like hydrogen combustion or pumped hydro. Batteries and pumped hydro are efficient but have relatively high capital cost. Liquid air technology looks competitive with other medium term on-demand sources and has relatively low capital costs.
I think they are talking about a situation where you have more solar/wind power being generated than you can use. It is going to be 100% lost if you don't have some kind of battery so the question is how much does it cost per kWh of surplus energy captured. Of course, if you have an overnight demand of X and your storage is 50% efficient, you will need to have generation capacity of 2X beyond the capacity that is used up during the day. That is, the more efficient your battery, the fewer surplus solar panels (for example) you need to charge the battery.
I've been aware of liquid air batteries for a while, and I find them an exciting option for a very affordable mass grid storage using of the shelf technology that's available now, I wonder if we could build more storage than we need, the option is here with this system
liquid air batteries are BS, compared to current Tesla MAGAPACK batteries (3mw each) , they will get Cheaper when TESLA changes them to 4680 LFP - iron batteries.
@@vw254 - EVERYTHING was laied out CLEAR as DAY , if Battery OEM's dont increase Production , TESLA will make 4680 battery in HIGH Nickel, LFP , and NCA/NCM Chemestry. ELIMINATING the need for Comodity Cells. CATL, Panasonic, LG Chem will LOOSE their BIGGEST Customer. Because, can do it THEMSELVES.
@@vw254 Are you referring to the size of a total battery pack, or the size of individual battery cells? If you refer to the latter, the size of 4680 cells, then that is literally their size: 46mm x 80mm. If you know the amount of cells per battery pack, you can easily figure out the total size.
@@markplott4820 different use cases! Although I would indeed put my money on redux flow as an intermittent storage. This efficiency is just painful. Seasonal is only possible through phase change or hydrogen, optionally converter to methane, in my opinion.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Not enough room inside - gravity storage systems are much larger, plus if you did build one inside you'd have major access issues for maintenance, and when you decommissioned the wind turbine, you'd have to decommission the gravity-storage unit. Best kept separate.
@@volodumurkalunyak4651 Yes, unfortunately most of the best locations for pumped hydro storage have already been developed. You can put the solid stuff anywhere land is cheap.
Efficiency is only an factor once we have enough storage to stop "throwing away" the power we are already able to generate. In the UK we need to build these big and build them fast, the renewables are growing quickly. We also had a problem where our gas tubine power stations had to "derate" for a few days, as the air temperature was so warm, the efficiency of their cooling was lowered, so we were burning coal!! If one of these stations was nearby, the gas company could have used their excess heat to warm the liquid air, which would have improved the efficiency of both systems!
The reason we haven't done it soon is that in the 1960 to 2010ish oil companies were buying up any patents that would compete with their market and suppressing them. If it weren't for oil companies we would easily be 30 to 40 years more advanced when it came the renewable energy and battery technology.
A great example of the use of air for power is the air car . Built 15-20 years ago . It used a old steam engine design , triple expansion engine. It got 300 mi. on a tank of air, I don't know how much the air cost, but if air was used as much as oil, I believe it would be cheaper . The air also could be cleaned up as it is compressed
This is such a brilliant idea, the first time I heard it on “now you know “ I’ve been trying to spread the word about it, this technology combined with Tesla battery Can be super affective balancing the electrical grid,, if this company developers /Build their technology in California they can run it themselves and get regular people to invest in it, this is a better way forward instead of trying to sell it to somebody else and that person gets the profit from it, this is the question of financial engineering/innovation not Technology,
I got some info on compressed air, the downside of it was that for each horse power you get out of a compressed air tank, you need a 10 hp compressor, cryogenics need more energy in order to compress the gas and then cool it to freezing temps, so you'd need a bigger installation to supply power for your cryogenic plant, or conversely having your wind turbine working 10 hours to retrieve an extra hour at no winds.
Then again, if you look back at the past 15 years, we've had countless breakthroughs and developments that have, literally, changed everything. Take your average phone today vs the ones available in 2005, just from a battery standpoint. The technology and production methods are continuously improving at a steady rate, at some points even exponential. It doesn't feel that incredible when you live with the technology and grow with it, but if you had a coma 15 years ago and woke up today you'd be bewildered by the improvements and new applications. Imagine that same experience in the coming 15 years. Sure, it might not be sci-fi levels of "change everything" as some people make it out to be, but it can very well be damn close to it.
@@Real_MisterSir tools are the best example. Phone batteries may be better but the phones use so much power that I don’t notice a huge difference, but tools! I’ve got a 48 volt lawnmower that will cut my whole yard on one charge. I’ve got a hammer drill that’s as capable as my corded one from 5 years ago.
@@Tagurrit That is true, but then again if you look at the phone as a tool - just think about how many tasks it manages to accomplish with that battery charge. You can be on 4g internet the whole day, browse social media, take high quality photos and video, stream music and videos.. Sure it doesn't feel like they have more charge, but they do accomplish a ton with what they have. Traditional phones would struggle to keep the music playing for a day. Meanwhile I can blast music for a full day and maybe loose 10-15% charge on my now old iPhone 6s. That's impressive.
@@Real_MisterSir You’re absolutely right. But I’m only talking about phone battery life not a phones overall use ability. I don’t even turn on my laptop any longer because I do so much on my phone. So as a tool the progress is amazing. But it’s like laptops. Twenty years ago I could turn on my 4 MB Ram 286 laptop and pull up word perfect from a DOS prompt or .bat menu in less than a minute. Today it takes two/three minutes. So object to object it’s slower but my 286 couldn’t do 1% of what my laptop today can do. So it depends on definitions.
We need to start building these now, assuming there is a standard model for "mass production" of the equipment, etc. Having a wise and thoughtful government would be a help!
First we need a really solid proof of concept. We need one or a few of these plants operating for enough time to make sure there are no issues left to be solved and that they are affordable. We're not in a hurry for storage on hardy any grid. Other than some tiny island grids I know of none that have installed enough wind and solar that there's a big need for storage.
@@tommyp1124 We've got a huge, highly reliable fusion reactor that's paid off and giving us free energy. We don't need any more. -- If someday someone figures out how to make affordable electricity using fusion then let's discuss it. For now we don't know how to control fusion and we have no route for making its electricity affordable.
Alex, Tesla MEGAPACK is Already PROFITABLE and EZ to Deploy , only 1 month from Delivery to GRID use. TESLA built Hornsdale in 100 days !!!!!!! using Powerpacks.
I have had the idea for storing water at a greater height for 30 years. Best part is it would have been practical back then and to use this simple idea would have paid us back in spades. And we will be using it for hundreds of years from now.
Good point! There are other methods to produce water from air (eg salts, my air conditioner:-) ) but water would be a natural byproduct of this process as presumably one wouldn’t want water/ice to be stored.
@@drewcipher896 Exactly....there IS no water vapor in desert air to make any realistic quantity of water from...I don't get how people can be ,frankly so fucking stupid. Actually ThunderFoot did a piece on some idiotic pice of trash some company was trying to sell that used exactly that idea, extracting lots of drinkable water from air...total scam of course, but it was astounding just how many idiots lost their money and got suckered into it, it's actually really bad that people can be that stupid in this day and age...
Love to see the cost of maintaining a cryogenic facility like that vs lithium power storage. Something tells me cryogenic systems have more failure paths than lithium cells!!??
But batteries lose charge capacity with every charge cycle so they will have to be replaced while yes maintenance cost will be higher but the plant could run for 40 years before needing to replace major parts
@@Hunter-lm7wo depends what chemistry of cells you're using and how the BMS controls their charge cycle. What you're possibly forgetting is that these battery banks will be continuously monitored and topped up with charge either by the grid or renewables so will only be in a condition to lose capacity when being drained. They won't be sat "idle" even if unsupervised directly by a human on site. An ebike battery loses about 10% storage capacity after around 1000 complete charge cycles but is still able to function. A tesla car battery has, I believe, a life span of 100,000 miles plus under warranty but will still work beyond that even at a reduced total storage capacity compared to new. An Ebike battery is about 0.5kwh, tesla car battery is between 55 - 80kwh capacity and we're talking about potentially mega watt hour capacity. Even if one "pack/module" breaks down the rest will still function. Lithium banks have no moving parts, no hostile chemicals and no extreme operating requirements. With cryogenic systems one "O" ring could cause the whole thing to stop working and given how hostile cryogenic system are to materials I'd still be backing lithium any day of the week. It already works and has proven to work. Tesla has already delivered in Australia and it works better than any other back up system they've tried, as far as I'm aware. I'm not saying this liquid air malarkey doesn't technically work, but Holy hell it's going to be a darn site more difficult to maintain. I would love to see both of them in an earth quake situation to see which one holds up better!!??
The future of grid storage is similar to how data center have tiers of storage. Li ion is like SSD, responsive but expensive. Air storage is like mechanical HDD, slower and more suitable for bulk storage. Pumped hydro is the tape drives you use as backup/archieve media. Together all three tiers create a responsive and cost effective storage system.
@@UndecidedMF This fact needs to be spread in more media. Few things are as annoying as smug morons going "I saw a windmill once but it wasn't turning" as "proof" that wind doesn't exist or all windmills are always broken, or whatever they are claiming this week. Also, USA in general needs to stop ignoring the need to repair and upgrade basic infrastructure, including the electric grid that could transmit the energy form those windmills to another state if nobody in Iowa needs it right now.
@@UndecidedMF curtailment? - Onshore wind turbines in the US (i.e. Iowa) have a ~35% capacity factor. So around 65% of the time they may indeed be idle. Note: turbines usually turn about 70% of the time, but turbines in a single farm (well actually a single state considering the size of weather patterns) are correlated because the weather pattern across them is the same, so they all tend to be spinning or not spinning. "Definitely need energy storage to keep those turbines turning" - sigh! Wind turns wind turbines. Are you going to tell us next that electricity generation drives the demand load? We definitely need energy storage, but that is to provide a more stable grid, not to keep wind turbines spinning.
@@AnalystPrime However, the "I saw a windmill once but it wasn't turning" observation is proof of: A: intermittent energy having difficulty integrating to the grid (either it isn't contributing power, or it is curtailed - in either case due to its intermittency). B: a low return on assets (an idle asset necessarily leads to a low return)
You are correct. Wind turbines are very high maintenance. Instead of listening to the posters below, you should talk to someone who actually works on them. They are totally incapable of replacing coal and nat gas. Nat gas is the cleanest, most efficient fuel we are using to generate electricity and we have hundreds of years of it. It's also the most effective way to heat your home in winter ever invented. The people pushing the climate change hoax do not care about this planet or it's people. There is a much darker agenda in play
Major hinderance: Lack of national policy supporting a coordinated/integrated mix of renewable energy generation and storage via a 'smart' national grid
Baseload is a term we need to abandon. It really refers to how steam plants operate. Steam plants are slow to bring online and don't load follow very well so past practice has been to keep them running just under their rated capacity. That's the baseload power supply. "Baseload" just shouldn't be used when talking about demand. There is an absolute minimum demand over any period of time. That tells the system designer how much electricity they will need at all times. Then, above that minimum, demand rises and falls. Talk about 'minimum demand' rather than using a term that applies to the generation side. Large scale storage like liquid air can time-shift energy from when there's an oversupply for demand to when there's an undersupply. Liquid air, batteries, compressed air, and pump-up hydro are all technologies that can time-shift energy. In a 100% renewable system there will be few 'always on'/baseload generators. Run of the river hydro and geothermal will generally run 24/365 but they will be small contributors. Hydro will generally be a dispatchable generator. Biomass/fuel may become either 'always on' or dispatchable. The main electricity generators will be wind and solar and they are 'use when available, store for when they aren't' sources.
Look at it like "pumped hydro in a box". Like pumped hydro, liquid air energy storage delivers clean energy storage with grid synchronous inertia to enable baseload renewable energy
@@wendyprabhu Good comment, but could we drop the term "baseload" when talking about renewable energy? Baseload refers to generation, mainly coal and nuclear plants. Things that are generally 'always on'. What storage helps provide is "an ample supply of electricity to meet demand when it occurs". A matching of supply and demand.
And therein lies the rub in all this. The electric utility industry (and its economically aligned fossil business affiliates) would much prefer to see liquid air storage technology killed in the crib rather than see its existing baseload fossil/nuclear plants have to begin competing for off peak market share and/or ratchet down production to match reduced demand during off peak. Liquid air storage will allow low cost gigawatt scale solar and wind to outflank the utilities on curtailment and thereby provide an economic path for continued growth and expansion of utility scale solar and wind. As a legitimate full service 24/7 power producer on equal footing, they will have the ability to store excess power generated during the day and dump it back into the grid 24/7 including off peak times when demand is low. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, it my guess the electric utility industry will go to the mattresses to try and prevent liquid air storage from gaining any type of physical access to the grid. They can easily deny property access, easements, and permits that may be necessary to hook into the grid. It may take a very long hard regulatory and legal fight for liquid air storage to gain physical access to the grid.
@@petertownsend252 Feels like you have an image of "the big, bad utility industry" in your head as if there is one organism. In fact, there are many utility companies operating across the country. Some of them own their 'means of production', some buy electricity from suppliers. Most are under some pressure to lower their carbon footprint. Nuclear is dead. Most US reactors are approaching the end of their usable lives and, essentially, no replacements are being constructed. Nuclear is simply priced out of most markets. We have reactors that are paid off, in decent working condition, and have years left on their license but are being closed. The market won't pay the $0.04+/kWh they need to cover expenses and avoid bankruptcy. A handful of reactors are running in the red but being kept online with subsidies. I think they are being subsidized as a means of protecting jobs and the businesses that need those workers money. Coal is dead. The only coal plants that can compete are a handful that are located so close to where the coal is extracted that they have very small fuel shipping costs. And those coal plants are in some areas with very good wind resources. We're closing coal plants and I don't think we've started construction on a new one since George W. was in office. Liquid air storage (I'm assuming it works and is affordable) won't outflank the utilities. The utilities will either build the facilities or purchase electricity from them if someone else is the owner. I can see utilities fighting liquid air storage only if the utility owns fossil fuel or nuclear plants that they are trying to keep in operation. And since utilities don't get to set their own rates, we'll see the governance boards disapproving continued operation of expensive generation if there are lower cost options available. There are some utilities that have been required to open up their grid for any qualifying supplier to sell electricity to consumers. They use the utility's grid and pay a use fee. In those service areas the utility company, the grid owner, is going to leap at liquid air storage if it lets them be more competitive with other suppliers competing for customers.
Hi Matt, air liquefaction is a brilliant storage system; as you mention, no major infrastructure or water diversion (which is very important as we are facing water shortages in many parts of the world), and the 'off-the-shelf' componentry makes for a simple entree into storage. An additional income stream for the storage plant would be to decant the oxygen, helium etc. and sell this gases separately and use only the remaining nitrogen to drive the turbines... Another excellent video Matt.
Cleaning is for particles large in comparison to air molecules, so large particles of Carbon, yes. Carbon dioxide is roughly the same size a Oxygen and Nitrogen molecules. Cleaning won't sort them.
As the process is already used to extract nitrogen and oxygen from the air, I think it could be used for carbon capture. The question is whether it would be simpler and more cost effective to have a separate plant for that.
@@davidmay268 You can sort the molecules by their condensation or freezing temperature, but that wouldn't be 'cleaning' it. Given that they have a use for both the heat and the coolth, doing it in concert sounds like a good idea. There may well be some engineering that I don't understand that would rule it out.
They don't isolate the different components of the air, but they could. This type of system could also act as carbon capture system ... it all depends on how they configure/build it out.
This is exciting tech. Dirt simple since it's basically pipes, tanks, a compressor and a turbine. If you lose containment, you have a cloud of... air... You have to filter the air as it's working, so it's basically CLEANING the air around it. You could split off the CO2 for sequestration during the process. You could probably separate out the argon and other rarer gasses for sale. Really neat stuff.
2 statements I've learned are 1: kiss= keep it simple stupid. 2: if it's stupid, but works, it isn't stupid. I learned about those two statements during my time in the U.S. Army.
Not really, as you want to have a single plant like this do a whole wind or solar park. Putting it in the turbine itself will just require lots of additional piping, heavier turbines that are more expensive to build and lower efficiency due to not being able to store and reuse the heat and cold generated in the process (as efficiently). So no, you don’t want this on the turbines themselves.
Electric generators are more efficient than mechanical linkages what with location sensitivity, mechanical maintenance, and all that greasing. A couple lengths of wire and an ac/dc converter can cheaply send that wind turbine product great distances.
@@AndreSomers This does not make sense. Every energy conversion have huge losses. You need the turbine to convert wind kinectic force into rotation force that pushes the generator to produce electricity then convert the electricity back into rotation again in other place to compress the gas. It have to be better to conect the compressor to the turbine and just compress the gas.
@@hasturbr Seems that you're just going to ignore every argument you've been given. Think about this: if your idea that every energy conversion has huge losses was true, then why would trains that run on non-electrified tracks employ a diesel-electric power train? That is: they use diesel to drive a generator that creates electrical power, which is then used to drive electric motors that drive the axles.
Thanks for all your work Matt really educational. I am in the UK. Question for you/everyone - I've tried to do some research re LABs & HighView but I cannot find out 1. The cost (pence/KwH) of the stored energy they will supply/output, I am guessing 40% higher than the renewable energy input, as the entire process is reportedly 60% efficient -correct? 2. How quickly it will be scaled up & to what scale? 3. What is the cost improvement on these scale ups on output electricity price? 4. What is the cost of the basic 5MW plant installation? There don't seem to be any figures. Thanks all.
Interesting, when I heard of this, I immediatly thought of the 'Air Car' that kind of flopped, they were using super compressed air to run an air motor to power a small car - the engine kept freezing! I had a bit of a think and realised this process is so inefficient, and you confirmed it, 25% wow. However it's better than nothing in this field.
The thumbnail shows a battery with air in it, tile says some thing similar , but Matt with smug laugh: you are not gonna have liquid air battery. (9:25) Me : why the _ did i click this
Everyone who knows what a liquid-air battery is clicked on this to find out more about this grid storage device. Like me. Agree that the title is clickbait though. The CEO himself says he is not competing with Li-ion. A lot of the commenters are missing that point as well. Some people are turning this into a "Tesla vs Highview" but they're targeting different market segments.
One aspect of the process that is not taken into account is that upstream, we can capture CO² and various pollutants by pumping the air, or even produce water by artificial condensation for the arid areas. Thus we can have a negative carbon balance, an expansion of income, multiple utility depending on the site.
Sounds good, and you are correct in the sense that there is no single solution. We need all different kinds of storage for all the different needs. This sounds like a cheap and simple alternative for all the wasted solar power at some locations. Good stuff.
I was reading about Hydrogen, and its possible uses, most people focus on hydrogen for cars; but one of the possibilities that I found really interesting and a really smart is to use hydrogen as a long storage battery, which means to have solar and wind energy used to create hydrogen, then store that hydrogen in old salt mines, then adapt current natural gas peaker plant to work with hydrogen, and pretty much turn on those plants when we can't use solar(night) or wind. Which I think is way better use of hydrogen than using it for vehicles.
this also makes me think of the systems using hydro to passively make pressured air by trapping air bubbles. possibly combination of the two can make this more efficient
%60 efficiency of wind and solar that are %30 efficient. Requiring 1.4 times as many solar panels and wind mills. Or we could make a few nuclear plants and call it a day.
It will not progress, too long talking about things and they lose interest, Do you remember the famous graphite batteries? wonders were said and they load in a short time and download very slowly ... Have you seen them? Everything is a parody that goes nowhere because of those in charge and their interests.
The title is pure clickbait. "Liquid Air Battery Explained - The End of Lithium Ion Batteries?" There's no danger whatsoever of liquid air ending the dominance of lithium ion batteries. In fact, it's misleading to even call liquid air energy storage a battery; it most certainly is not. Thumbs down for the trash title. Any efficiency is predicated on being able to make use of the waste heat and cooling. That makes it a much less portable solution than you've implied. It's got to be colocated with uses for that heat and cooling capacity. By the way, it's also got to compete with its sister technology, compressed-air energy storage (CAES). I've no idea which would win out on any given project, but my guess would be CAES since it's generating less unwanted heat and cooling. Also it can take advantage of existing cavities such as spent salt mines for air storage.
I’ve actually changed the title after feedback like yours. I didn’t think it was that clickbaity, but clearly missed the mark. The actual term for this technology is cryogenic energy storage, but it’s better known as liquid air battery ... hence the title.
It isn't quite that bad. I agree "Liquid Air Storage ...." would be better, but not a major faux pas. The advantage it has over CAES is exactly its colocation ability and its lack of need for old mines, etc. In cities, where the demand is - and demand for district heat and district cooling - and the non-flammability aspect (compared to a hydrogen plant inside a city) - and its constructability make it ideal. It really pairs well with a Gen IV nuclear plant (nuclear providing waste heat for expansion, liquid air providing load following), and both siteable inside a city.
This is even better in hot sunny climate. You can get Hot molten salt in storage for when you need to expand the nitrogen. Then Boom! I had this idea since long time ago. Will love to merge both.
If it could be scaled down it would be ideal for an off the grid home. You use the heat generated by compressing the air to do water heating and air heating in the winter, and decompressing the air through the turbine generator gives you cold for refrigeration and air conditioning in the summer. It would make sense to have a giant hot water tank as well as a giant ice tank with heat exchanging coils to make sure you have those when you need them.
I'm not against nuclear power, but no-one wants to build them. They cost too much, and recent projets in the West are all examples of extreme cost and time overrun. Biggest problem, is time to deployment. We can't wait another 15-20 years before new reactors come online in massive numbers to start reducing carbon emissions. And that would require political decisions being made today to build hundreds of nuclear power plants immediately. It's simply not happening fast enough and at sufficient scale.
As a byproduct you can make nitrogen for ammonia energy storage, oxygen for space rockets, and neon for fancy lighting to keep birds away from the windmills.
this seems like a good way to both produce liquid airs and store energy. we could even go back and add this system to any place that produces liquid airs.
The problem I see with storing renewables isn't just a daily cycle issue, but also how do you store it for a week or longer? Because the wind doesn't blow the same every day and the the sky isn't always clear, you need to store the energy over a much longer period, otherwise you still need the backup peaker power stations.
If you assume there is a baseload generation then the need for long term storage is negated. If you don't have nuclear in the mix then yes you need to be able to store enough power to run everything for at least a few days. I haven't done one in a while but if you take california as an example and do the math. Assuming demand peaks at 35GW and minimum is 20GW averaging 28GW With baseload to last 3 days with no solar or wind you need 576 GWh of storage with 15GW of capacity + 5GW for variations in peak. Realistically solar will always give some and so will wind so this is a worst case. Without baseload to last 3 days you need 2016 GWh with 35GW of capacity and again add 5GW for variation. In reality renewables will always need to generate more than is needed and more than we have capacity to store so that on bad stretches of low output the capacity doesn't fall low enough to need a long term storage. Its cheaper to generate 25% extra solar so that on bad days you still meet demand and really bad days you aren't far below it. So assuming solar gives 30% during cloudy stormy weather and it lasts for an entire week straight. Ignoring wind for ease of math. Also assume that solar on a good day is producing 120% of the need above baseload for the day thus 18GW + 5GW for peak variability. At 30% output it still produces 7GW. So to last the full week you need. 168 GWh of storage with 15GW of capacity + 5GW for variation Note the solar is as average output same for wind. In reality the amount of panels needed is 3-4 times the sticker as they only produce during the day or when the wind blows. So 18GW of solar average needs something like 54-72 GW of panels. Thus why systems are compared in cost per GWh not cost per GW.
It would be good to know what is the investment cost to build a 24 hour storage capacity with either solar and/or wind sized system to generate XXXMW for use and storage of excess energy generated.. Please step through the analysis to show the path forward for investment in terms of dollars and resources required to build this plant. Thanks
I recently went to Chattanooga. They have a giant reservoir full of water that is a giant battery. Its a reservoir at the top of mountains, that is ready to be released when power is needed.
Static storage when not needed is better, as you don't have to keep adding energy just to keep it cool enough once you've topped off, but as he noted you can't do that everywhere
This was a pretty dope video to watch. I hope we can see more of this soon. I started talking to my dad about all the wonderful knowledge I’ve gained from this channel and he was pretty surprised. Thank you so much for the time you put into the videos, I love learning stuff. :P
The Differences ln these two systems are simple to complex, but I think instead of asking which is better for everything I think having two different types is a good idea one for normal storage and one for quick response emergencies
This is excellent, and perfect use case for public utility energy storage development on a regional, maybe even at a large substation level. Also good for energy generation cooperatives. I think this is the missing piece.
The Sydney Australia fish market uses compressed liquid air to run their fork lifts. They changed from propane because the fumes (CO2 etc) in the market area were reaching toxic levels.
I understand they use the expanding gas to drive turbines to generate electricity. But the phase changes of the gas also produces big temperature difference. Wouldn't the temperature difference be able to power a sterling engine to spin the generator also?
