Ashalim solar power station - photo

[neilbourjaily]

I was reading on compressed CO2 "battery" a while back and it is being made in Spain for storage purposes for a large solar voltaic array. Like anything large and expensive.

The issue with any kind of mechanical storage device is its capacity is measured in watts not megawatts. It will take the chemists and physicists working together to develop high density storage devices, making and breaking bonds. Unfortunately, even with our chemical devices we are still stuck in incremental improvements. We need orders of magnitude. Even one order of magnitude would be earth shattering.

[mwmkravchenko]

The issue with any kind of mechanical storage device is its capacity is measured in watts not megawatts. It will take the chemists and physicists working together to develop high density storage devices, making and breaking bonds. Unfortunately, even with our chemical devices we are still stuck in incremental improvements. We need orders of magnitude. Even one order of magnitude would be earth shattering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage

There are many existing high storage systems. I hadn't read up on this for a while.

There are some massive energy storage systems in Europe. Nothing stopping this from being done here. Just a change in thinking. The underlying problem is always the capitalist ideas of who's going to pay me? Nothing wrong with money. But what can be wrong is placing money ahead of the good for all people. In a 150 years that money concept has caused quite a serious set of problems. One that will cost more money in damages than was gleaned in the processes that caused it. Never mind loss of lives and lively hoods.

Remember among the first cars were battery electric cars. The companies were purchased, and closed down. No money to be made from them.

As in most fields of learning. Engineers are very slow to be willing to try new things. The ones that really know what they are doing are the ones that try the new ideas. Finance is the same way. Proven, must be proven.

Follow the links in the article and you will find solar stations that have 13 hours of storage capacity and have produced power continuously for 30 day periods. That is nothing to sneeze at.

So are the amortized costs per kilowatt. The one in Dubai carefully mentioning hoe the cost per kilowatt is unsubsidized.

That is a lower cost per kilowatt than a coal or gas station. The difference being is the power production density.

Yes you need a gigawatt for roughly a million people depending on A/C usage. And yes there are morning and evening residential peaks. Industry is more steady state. And it is the largest user by a wide margin.