Google Will Help Scale 'Long-Duration Energy Storage' Solution for Clean Power (cleantechnica.com) 16
"Google has signed its first partnership with a long-duration energy storage company," reports Data Center Dynamics. "The tech giant signed a long-term partnership with Energy Dome to support multiple commercial deployments worldwide to help scale the company's CO2 battery technology."
Google explains in a blog post that the company's technology "can store excess clean energy and then dispatch it back to the grid for 8-24 hours, bridging the gap between when renewable energy is generated and when it is needed." Reuters explains the technology: Energy Dome's CO2-based system stores energy by compressing and liquefying carbon dioxide, which is later expanded to generate electricity. The technology avoids the use of scarce raw materials such as lithium and copper, making it potentially attractive to European policymakers seeking to reduce reliance on critical minerals and bolster energy security.
"Unlike other gases, CO2 can be compressed at ambient temperatures, eliminating the need for expensive cryogenic features," notes CleanTechnica, calling this "a unique new threat to fossil fuel power plants." Google's move "means that more wind and solar energy than ever before can be put to use in local grids," Pumped storage hydropower still accounts for more than 90% of utility scale storage in the US, long duration or otherwise... Energy Dome claims to beat lithium-ion batteries by a wide margin, currently aiming for a duration of 8-24 hours. The company aims to hit the 10-hour mark with its first project in the U.S., the "Columbia Energy Storage Project" under the wing of the gas and electricity supplier Alliant Energy to be located in Pacific, Wisconsin... [B]ut apparently Google has already seen more than enough. An Energy Dome demonstration project has been shooting electricity into the grid in Italy for more than three years, and the company recently launched a new 20-megawatt commercial plant in Sardinia.
Google points out this is one of several Google clean energy initiatives:
Google explains in a blog post that the company's technology "can store excess clean energy and then dispatch it back to the grid for 8-24 hours, bridging the gap between when renewable energy is generated and when it is needed." Reuters explains the technology: Energy Dome's CO2-based system stores energy by compressing and liquefying carbon dioxide, which is later expanded to generate electricity. The technology avoids the use of scarce raw materials such as lithium and copper, making it potentially attractive to European policymakers seeking to reduce reliance on critical minerals and bolster energy security.
"Unlike other gases, CO2 can be compressed at ambient temperatures, eliminating the need for expensive cryogenic features," notes CleanTechnica, calling this "a unique new threat to fossil fuel power plants." Google's move "means that more wind and solar energy than ever before can be put to use in local grids," Pumped storage hydropower still accounts for more than 90% of utility scale storage in the US, long duration or otherwise... Energy Dome claims to beat lithium-ion batteries by a wide margin, currently aiming for a duration of 8-24 hours. The company aims to hit the 10-hour mark with its first project in the U.S., the "Columbia Energy Storage Project" under the wing of the gas and electricity supplier Alliant Energy to be located in Pacific, Wisconsin... [B]ut apparently Google has already seen more than enough. An Energy Dome demonstration project has been shooting electricity into the grid in Italy for more than three years, and the company recently launched a new 20-megawatt commercial plant in Sardinia.
Google points out this is one of several Google clean energy initiatives:
- In June Google signed the largest direct corporate offtake agreement for fusion energy with Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
- In October Google agreed to purchase "advanced nuclear" power from multiple small modular reactors being developed by Kairos Power.
- Google also partnered with a clean-energy startup to develop a geothermal power project that contributes carbon-free energy to the electric grid.
I'm Excited (Score:3)
I'm excited to see this in action. But, all I can find is renderings. Nothing in India, Italy, or US.
I hope that it is successful, but I've got a nagging feeling that this is another bullshit project.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, seems like vaporware. The linked article was very light on details, like cost per kwh stored or round-trip efficiency, both of which are very important when discussing energy storage. Looks like just another "press release project" where the whole point of the "project" is to generate press releases.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not vaporware.
This video has a decent analysis of it https://youtu.be/GSzh8D8Of0k?f... [youtu.be]
The way to look at it is that it's basically liquid air storage, but much less unwieldy. They claim round-trip efficiency of 75%.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, this seems to be in a pre-prototype stage. That means it can go either way, from "ready in 5 years" to "needs 10-30 years more materials science" to "does not work after all". What you really want is a prototype that has run at least to the first maintenance interval point, i.e. several years. Before there are too many unknowns.
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.energy-storage.new... [energy-storage.news]
This article from 2022 reports their 2.5 MW, 4 MWh demonstration system being fully operational.
Re: I'm Excited (Score:2)
Oh no (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It works on bottled CO2. That's a limited natural resource. What if we run out?
Then we will just have to make more.
Is this a closed loop system do they intend to extract CO2 from the air and then release it back to the air with every cycle?
If this extracts CO2 from the air with each cycle then there is a loss in energy in taking that CO2 from the air. I recall a video showing the process of producing liquid nitrogen and the first two steps were the extraction of water vapor then the step of removing CO2. There's more than one way to get the CO2 from the air but the process I saw sou
Re: (Score:3)
Possible abandonware (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless Commonwealth really shits the bed, Google won't need energy storage solutions. They'll have it 24/7 from fusion reactors.
Re: (Score:1)
Unless Commonwealth really shits the bed, Google won't need energy storage solutions. They'll have it 24/7 from fusion reactors.
The intent I got from this is the technology is to better match the intermittent nature of wind and solar power to the demands of the grid, which is also a helpful technology in matching the steady state nature of large thermal power plants to the demands of the grid. This works both ways.
But then if there's something that gets really hot like a fusion reactor then there's options for varied means of thermal energy storage. There was a hint of the potential for thermal energy storage that went with the me
Re: (Score:2)
Even if _everything_ goes well, that is 25 years in the future or more.
Do they have a prototype (Score:2)
The idea seems to have merit, but you only really know how far from real-world deployment they are after they have run a prototype for a couple of years. I seem to be unable to find whether thy have one or not. Does anybody know?
Snow powered engine? (Score:2)
Either they are running a turbine or engine on CO2 snow, or they are burning natural gas to get the supercritical CO2 fully vaporized.
You have seen what happens when a CO2 fire extinguisher discharges, right?
Compressed air storage has the same problem but less so. Expanding air is cold and you get much lower pressure than expected. So they reheat it with a natural gas burner.
Re: (Score:2)
Either they are running a turbine or engine on CO2 snow, or they are burning natural gas to get the supercritical CO2 fully vaporized.
And either way, they're going to get back only a fraction of the energy they put in to compress the CO2 in the first place. And I have to wonder what the capacity of this compressed-gas storage is going to be; the blurb talks about 8-24 hours of power supply, but if it can only cover 10% of the grid requirement, but a loss of wind drops out 20% of the supply and stays becalmed for three days, it's not going to help much.