How liquid air could help keep the lights on

[Still Waters]

It sounds like magic but it is real - a plan to store cheap night-time wind energy in the form of liquid air.

Here is how: you use the off-peak electricity to compress and cool air in a tank, so it becomes a freezing liquid.

When demand peaks, you warm the liquid back into a gas, and as that expands it drives a turbine to create more electricity.

The technology, created by a backyard inventor, is about to hit the big time.

It has been tried at small scale but now the firm behind it, Highview, has announced that a grid-scale 50MW plant will be built in the north of England on the site of a former conventional power plant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50140110

[+Desertrat56]

interesting.  I wonder how much energy it takes to compress the air and then warm it up again.

[L.A.T.1961]

It looks promising, if its successful it might attract more attention to the idea and its potential uses for other applications like powering cars and buses.  

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/green-motoring/10087205/Liquid-Air-the-future-of-motoring.html

[the13bats]

10 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

interesting.  I wonder how much energy it takes to compress the air and then warm it up again.

I had a redneck buddy really great guy but he just couldn't grasp why when he had a generator ( from a car 12v ) with a belt going to a 12v motor and wired together when he would spin it by hand it wouldn't keep spinning ( free energy )

['Walt' E. Kurtz]

Cool I know that liquid nitrogen also work :-)

[moonman]

I can't imagine that being energy efficient, but I suppose when the alternative is creating lots and lots of giant batteries to charge it's not so bad.

What we really need is economical, clean, and efficient battery tech.

Edited October 23, 2019 by moonman