I’ve read about this a lot and they always gloss on the critical issue this has, round trip efficiency. Considering you have to heat the liquid when expanding it to avoid freezing the valves, i’d assume at least half of the energy is wasted, making roundtrip efficiency abysmal.
Another big issue is that there’s really no demand for more than 4h storage nowadays, going by price spreads. Just check Caiso and ERCOT daily markets, and those are two huge markets with a lot of solar in them.
3 Comments
Energy Dome has a pilot project in Wisconsin too.
Kudos for linking to a high quality source.
I’ve read about this a lot and they always gloss on the critical issue this has, round trip efficiency. Considering you have to heat the liquid when expanding it to avoid freezing the valves, i’d assume at least half of the energy is wasted, making roundtrip efficiency abysmal.
Another big issue is that there’s really no demand for more than 4h storage nowadays, going by price spreads. Just check Caiso and ERCOT daily markets, and those are two huge markets with a lot of solar in them.