Zhongchu Guoneng Technology Co., Ltd. (ZCGN) has switched on the world's largest compressed air energy storage project in China. The $207.8 million energy storage power station has a capacity of 300 MW/1,800 MWh and uses an underground salt cave.
  • Diplomjodler
    5•6 months ago

    Well, no. The round trip efficiency of pumped hydro is terrible. And flywheels aren’t scalable. 72% is pretty decent and I’m sure that can still be improved.

    • Skua
      5•6 months ago

      Round trip efficiency of modern pumped storage hydro is about 80%. How is that horrible if 72% is decent?

      Pumped hydro obviously does have drawbacks in that it requires you to have the water and suitable landscape available to dedicate to it, but efficiency doesn’t seem to be one of them

      • @[email protected]English
        4•6 months ago

        Energy density is terrible of pumped hydro, plus you have the environmental impact; tunnel out the inside of a mountain, place a generator hall in there, and then flood a valley. Sure it look ok at the end of it, but huge damage has to be done each time. All of that coats large sums of money too, and it can only be done in a relatively small number of locations. Step 1. You need a mountain to pump the water up.

        Compressed air batteries are a lot more energy dense, so smaller footprint, so much lower environmental Impact / cheaper and they don’t rely on particular geographic features to work. They might be a bit less efficient, but that seems like a good trade to me.