Power Storage

Recently I had a power outage in my whole area, and this got me thinking: >Is there an efficient way of storing electric energy over relatively long periods of time? >Is it practical? I am not thinking of something to power my entire house, but something good enough to charge my phone and laptop, maybe power a satellite modem, etc. Now I know there are already market solutions to this but I wonder, what are your experiences/knowledge on this topic?

The best we have currently are gyro batteries where energy is stored in the momentum of a spinning flywheel and extracted using some sort of clutch mechanism and a generator to convert back to electricity, the technology was actually used for buses for the better part of a century however was considered too high maintenance for practical use and was replaced with the diesel engine when it was designed. Here's a source from the toob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QLEERYS5C8 For the most part, flywheel storage is impractical and expensive. Chemical storage in the form of lithium-ion batteries is pointless as the batteries will form dendrite crystals extremely quickly (which when connecting the diodes will kill the battery) with the high current input and will chemically decline over time rapidly in comparison to other methods. It's also ridiculously expensive for large-scale applications and potentially extremely dangerous. If a battery explodes it's not something you can just "put out" with a cup of water not to mention other environmental hazards. Then there's emerging technologies such as graphene batteries which are immensely more efficient than lithium-ion or existing chemical storage and can hold around 1.5-3x the charge, it's technology still under development so expect to wait a couple of years and it'll be mainstream for about 3 years then we'll be at our final destination. Solid state batteries. That's right. This technology uses solid sodium lattice to store energy between the diodes. Seeing as it's sodium, it's inexpensive to extract from seawater and salinity-affected areas. So potentially environmentally friendly. It also doesn't suffer from current limitations, (so you can charge it as fast as you're converting x energy to electricity), it doesn't form dendrites, and can hold it's charge indefinitely. In terms of energy storage it can hold +5 times more energy than lithium-ion. It's even chemically safe! No more exploding Samsungs! Look up John B. Goodenough if you really want to dive into it (he's also the creator of the lithium-ion battery) and has spent his life devoted to energy storage and didn't even patent either of the technologies, making it all open to the world. He's had every opportunity to make his pile and retire, yet continues innovating is his field. Mucho respect. Solid state batteries seem to be the most promising of all upcoming energy storage, however I personally feel that they'll be approximately a 5 year period before it's mainstream, in that time we'll first go through graphene batteries. In terms of practicality, we'll have to wait for solid-state, everything else is too expensive for long-term storage, even then, we don't need too long-term anyway as energy is used up almost as fast as it's generated. It's more for power-outages etc which can last from anywhere between a few minutes to days. I do think it's very promising technology for portable energy and electric cars, computers etc. ...despite the fact that electric cars are soykaf, that's another thread altogether though.

Battery storage suffers from constant loss, so isn't practical for long term storage. Flywheels sufder from frictional loss among other things. Just off the top of my head, you could store energy long term by using it to, say, lift a heavy weight (stone?) to a height, then much later use its slowly descending mass to spin the shaft of a generator. Perhaps not very efficient, but definitely "long-term" storage without loss.

The stablest long term energy storage is hydrocarbons. The conventional way to store energy for decades is to store diesel and coal. A renewable way would be to store methanol, ethanol, biodiesel or charcoal. Methanol and ethanol are quite interesting, because they can be used in a methanol fuel cell for electricity generation with much higher efficiency than turbines or engines. You could easily produce your own methanol or ethanol from most biomass, store it for decades in a wooden wine barrel, and then use it by burning it or in a fuel cell.

>>5381 I've often thought that synthetic methanol created using atmospheric CO2 and renewable or nuclear-sourced electricity would be a great choice for use-cases where direct electricity isn't practical (ocean-going cargo ships, main power in very small and very remote off-grid communities that get little-to-no sun most of the year, fuel for on-site backup generators at hospitals and other important emergency services, etc). As you say, it's easy to store for extremely long periods of time, can be used efficiently in a multitude of ways, and so long as the input carbon comes from the atmosphere it's completely carbon-neutral.

>>5404 >>5381 huh, very interesting, I didn't realize you could get methanol directly from the atmosphere. Is there a jank way to do it or do you need special equipment?

>>5405 Not directly, no. There's no beating the laws of thermodynamics. But it is possible to synthesize a lot of easily-stored fuels in a carbon-neutral way using atmospheric CO2, if one doesn't mind the loss of end-to-end efficiency for a particular use-case.

>>5404 If you want to use atmospheric air, it would be more efficient to just compress it rather than convert it to methanol. Current industrial processes don't use atmospheric CO2, because the concentration is 400 ppm, a tiny fraction of what is available from flue gas. Energy density would be lower and containers would be more expensive than hydrocarbons, but efficiency is much higher from a thermodynamics perspective. If you want to conserve energy, compressed air is what you would use. If you want to high reliability and performance, then hydrocarbons are the best. Methanol can also be used in existing petrol engines with some tuning, but cargo ships will probably be wind powered using kite sails in the future. There is just so much wind on the seas, and it is extremely time-tested. >>5405 Air liquidification is the standard process to extract any gas from atmospheric air.

>>5380 I did some quick math on that, correct me if I'm wrong: you would need a mass of 36668kg to store 1kWh of energy on a 10m height.

Store solar energy in form of nonperishable food supplies. Convert it into electricity via bicycle generator. Wanna surf the net? Crank that pedal, boy(girl)!

>>5432 The advantage of gravity storage is that it's pretty cost-effective at utility scales, if you have a suitable hill nearby. Check out gravity train storage for an example of how it can be done. It's basically electric trains hauling rail car beds with giant concrete blocks. Storing energy from the grid means driving the trains uphill, releasing energy back into the grid means easing off on the brakes and running the motors in reverse as generators. Power is transferred both ways through the electrified third-rails. The only construction expertise required is the same as laying an electrified-subway track. And it's easy to expand the system's storage capacity either per-train or in parallel tracks, or both, given available space on the hill. Of course it's not really a DIY thing. But for large-scale storage it's a really cool idea.

>>5434 Why not just use a water tank and a pump/generator, seems like that will have fewer moving parts and you can just get it from a lake?

>>5438 >Why not just use a water tank and a pump/generator, seems like that will have fewer moving parts and you can just get it from a lake? You're assuming that there's always a suitable lake nearby. The advantage to gravity trains is that they work literally anywhere where there's a gently sloping hill.

Along this same line of thought, could you use a jack to separate two very, very powerful magnets, then generate electricity by slowly letting them return to contact? This could be more of a DIY scale project.

>>5440 Sure, nothing against thermodynamics in that. The problem is in the complexity and strength of the mechanism used to separate the magnets. The advantage to gravity storage (whether water in reservoirs or concrete on train cars) is that it's basically a linear system. X amount of water through a turbine or X amount of controlled descent of an electric motor acting as a generator rolling down a hill equals Y amount of electricity, regardless of the amount of water left in the reservoir or precise altitude of the train car. Magnetic fields follow the inverse square law. For powerful magnets, the change in forces resulting from even a microscopic distance change can be quite large. The engineering tolerances of such a device would have to be incredibly precise. Science is A-OK with the idea. Engineering, on the other hand...

Gravity batteries are simple technology, but need on-site infrastructure. A large pit and a tower needed to guide the weight. There is a working gravity battery solution distributed in very poor regions: https://deciwatt.global/gravitylight 15 lumens for 20 minutes of descent https://rimstar.org/science_electronics_projects/gravity_light_homemade_diy_v1.htm Old homemade prototype Pneumatic storage tanks are long-term in their lifespan, they can be recharged for 20 years (not sure about longevity of single charge, if that's what OP is looking for). There is also this very old thing, but their site is defunct and it smells more like scamware, but you'd get the point: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=hZiaTV6uvFQ Yeah, >TEDx Food, slaves and bicycle exercise machines are still my best bet.

>>5447 My area has a ton of disused quarries. Mine shafts would also be candidates for gravbats.