There's also the problem of scaling up. That gentle little slightly exothermic chemical reaction in a test tube can get extremely violent when you have huge quantities of it. You are going to be storing large quantities of a metastable chemical. If it starts to decompose, you'll almost certainly get heat building up faster than it can escape and then a runaway reaction.
Nah, because you never get the amount of density. Only the surface layer perhaps 1 to 2 mm can be charged. Its really a useless option since you never get enough usable thermal energy out of it.
Well if you mean they will all start decomposing to the thermodynamically stable structure then sure. This could be dangerous for sure but I would imagine that you could engineer a way to manage it. Smaller cells with low thermal conductivity separators perhaps? As long as the cells can stand up to their maximum potential heat output then it should be contained. Not an engineer so just throwing ideas around.
That's one thing that most people never realize: a storage with high enough energy density in the end is in most cases nothing less than a potential explosive device. And this is the exact reason why we will never have much more efficient batteries in our consumer products - it all comes down to security reasons.
@@SabineHossenfelder Regarding hydro storage, there is an alternative to building mountains with lakes next to them. One can use the bottom of the sea and hollow concrete spheres that serve as a reservoir. You may want to check out the corresponding research of the Fraunhofer Institute for storing energy in the sea this way.
I like this one. They may well be on track. If they find the right molecules and the right crystallization or other arrangement it is ideal. I guess they have to optimize both the stability of the molecule, and the convenience with which energy can be stored and released on demand. I see the paper in the notes below the video. THANK YOU! I AM impressed but now it is the job of improving the most efficient cell as you say!
Efficiency is not the be-all and end-all. Compressed air storage - a 19th century solution - is cheap, easily scaleable, reasonably efficient (pushing 70%) and has far fewer recycling issues than lithium ion batteries, etc. But because it's not "fashionable" it receives very little attention, unfortunately.
@@dw620 Are You talking about CAES? (I presume yes) It is indeed scalable (installation in Huntorf). However, there is the same issue as with pumped-storage - at larger scale You are dependent on availability of suitable localisation (depleted salt mines). Also, it's based on gas turbine, so You need gas (with its own significantly high carbon footprint).
I would like to correct the statement at 3:42, which is unfortunately wrong. First, the highlighted Jablonski-like diagram refers to the aryl-norbornadiene, which is the active photo-isomerisation educt, not the additional triplet sensitizer (MeOTX or Ir(ppy)3) added to the energy storage device. Second, the authors do not convert the sunlight from the visible range to the UV. This could be theoretically done by e.g. a triplet-triplet annihilation up-conversion molecular system, but here this is not the case. Instead, the additional compound (which absorbs visible light) is sensitizing the ArNB triplet via triplet-triplet energy transfer, which then directly undergoes photo-isomerisation from the triplet excited state without direct excitation/population of the higher singlet excited state via UV light. Anyway, keep up the nice work!
@@Philip-t2j since Im currently doing my PhD in the field of photochemistry and I know a little bit about the NBD QC reaction (+ I read the paper of Kerzig et al.), yes it is. But feel free to correct me wrong.
@@xul645 Philip wasn't suggestion your wrong, but your statements come across as techno babble since he knows nothing about photochemistry. I am sure your analysis was spot on, but like Phillip I know very little about photochemistry. That said, This seems useless, since for a solid state panel, only the surface area exposed to light can be energized, so very little energy can be stored, & stored thermal energy in a solid state solar panel is also pretty useless (no practical way to extract energy).
@@guytech7310Yeah you are right, my answer was very scientific and I admit that my reply was maybe too harsh. I am sorry for that. Thats why Im not a science communicator and thats why I appreciate the work of Sabines channel (I really like, that she highlighted an interesting concept for photochemical energy storage). You are correct, but the presented study by the Kerzig group is done in solution (energy storage reaction does not take place in solid state here). That would be another major point of criticism from my side. This video may confuse the general audience in that regard, since she mentions the term "intermediate layer" in the above mentioned part. The general concept is as follows: A NBD chromophore absorbs light and is converted to QC (the photoisomer). This initial process is followed by a second, on demand reaction, that generates heat and regenerates the original reactant NBD. QC is the corresponding stable higher energy isomer. The latter then releases its energy as heat by reversing to the parent NBD on thermal excitation or preferently via catalytic activation. The idea is in simple words the following: The solution (once activated by light absorption) can heat up like a pot of water on a hot plate whenever you want (the storage part of the story), if you just switch on the hot plate (trigger the back-reaction of the photo-isomerisation cycle). The efficiency of this overall process is of course, let say questionable :D
A similar idea has been around for decades and it's called eutectic salts. It stores heat in the phase change of a substance (heat of fusion) converting it from solid to liquid. Heat is extracted when the substance cools and returns to a solid. Water is an example of this but the phase change happens at a temperature too low to take advantage of. The eutectic salts have a phase change at much higher temperatures.
This has been done for decades , Solar thermal plants use molten salts to store energy. Issue is solidification in pipes, corrosion & caking damaging circulation pumps. What the industry is seeking is solid state solutions that don't need any pumps or pipes to move energy. That said, Pump Hydro is probably the best economical solution. Use PV\Wind to run water pumps, and than use water turbines to supply continuous\stable power to the grid. That said the issue is providing enough PV & wind to keep the reservoir full. with PV, you need about 6 times the power output to keep the reservoir full (presume 5.5hrs of insolation per day, 5.5 * 6 = 33hrs per day, but assume power conversion losses & overcast days.
@@eloquentemu Hydro storage isn’t 80% efficient. It’s about 80% at the electrical production end, 60% at the pumping end for about 48% efficiency through the cycle.
@russbell6418 everything I've read, and I just rechecked, indicate that the total round trip efficiency is 70-80+ even with evaporation included. Do you have a source?
Hi Sabine, I thank you for your seemingly endless output of science communication. I find stories about what's happening in science and technology very interesting and very much enjoy your TH-cam channel. I find it especially valuable as you are so immune to hype. Today's video was particularly interesting to me in both these respects, as I had not heard of molecular solar thermal before, which was interesting, and you mentioned that even with a ten-fold increase in its efficiency it's only at 5.8%. I don't know how you will take the following comment but I will try to state it anyway. In the two or three times recently where you have talked about solar photo-voltaic, you've used the phrase "Keep dusting the solar panels." Today's video actually ends with that phrase. While the phrase is, I guess, true, it's also demeaning. Such a phrase is, for example, a gift to some of the politicians here in Australia who are hell bent on protecting fossil fuel interests and use the guise of protecting farmers to argue against wind and solar generation. the phrase, for me at least, distracted from the useful information in the video. Anyway, if you are (still?) reading this I much appreciate it. Kind regards, Sean
Hi Sabine! Love your channel! The energy storage method I like is the sand “battery”. It’s inexpensive, easy and if done right, can safely store heat that can later be used to heat buildings, or provide heat to run a steam powered generator
It sounds interesting, although I imagine it would have a pretty low energy storage capacity (J/m^3) compared to other methods. Changing the bonds of A slightly to create another molecule B that can almost always revert back to the original molecule A would likely require very few changes to the bonds being possible at those energy levels, and you need a molecule for each bond. Compare that to a lithium cell, where most components are much smaller and lighter than these molecules and the ionisation energy is likely to be significantly greater than the usable energy stored in the molecular bonds.
@traumflug haha fair. As long as it's not used for cars, I guess the density isn't that important a factor. Cost, production rate, and footprint per unit energy storage are more important than energy density. It would be interesting if the technology gets used somewhere in practice.
I wonder whether there are any chemists working on an improved version of photosynthesis. Perhaps somebody here knows. It might even need expertise from physicists!
As we approach 10 billion humans all wanting cheap abundant energy in diverse geological, climate and cultural environments it is clear we need many generation and storage strategies. Lets hope the engineers can build out the science in them all, including this one. Thank you Sabine for your lucid and reasonable analysis. As an aside it is shame we cannot harvest hyberbole energy. Our problems would all be solved immediately.
The US operates over 250 fission reactors. The only fatal incident from a reactor anomaly was in 1961 with the experimental reactor SL-1 (Over 700 people die per year from natural gas). Safe disposal of spent fuel has been solved. Why are we still searching for a "clean" energy source again?
Within this system, you do in fact have bond formation/breaking on charging/release in the form of [2+2] cycloaddition. It's intramolecular, so you still end up with one molecule at the end. Also, there's plenty of other molecules of this type (photochromes, or photoswitches) which are being investigated for the same purpose. The two that are favourites of physical chemists are azobenzene and dithienylethene (DTE).
Thanks for exposing this intriguing approach. As a current user of multiple Powerwalls, I hope they make rapid progress on efficiency and commercialization.
Hydro storage is around 4x time cheaper than battery storage if you compare amount energy storage. But only apply if you have favourable location, also hydro storage usually have secondary function for flood protection. In Poland one of major pump storage was plan to take 10 year to fill up but manage to fill up in a few months after finish due take entire flood wave by this alone pay for itself due prevent property damage worth more that build cost.
True. That said, battery storage is still getting cheaper. We're now near €50/kWh, so that '4x' might be gone before too long. Also, here in Germany pretty much all valleys are densely populated, so building hydro storage would mean relocating hundreds of families.
@@traumflug Still we need use all available places for hydro storage due they second function is flood protection not mention that is we compare lifetime cost of this systems by 50years mark hydro is 16x cheaper
What I don't understand it's why we don't just use hydro at night and solar during the day. Everyone is talking about new hydro storage rather than just using existing hydro more cleverly.
@@2bfrank657 We do. At least here in Germany and Switzerland. It just happens that there's only hydro storage for some 5-10% capacity in Germany. Depopulating dozens of densely populated valleys for sufficient capacity isn't exactly popular.
Most of the solar energy is in the visible range. Well, it is visible because it is where most of the energy is. Well said. Because of the same reason water and air are colourless (for earthlings)
There is also a lot of energy in UV- and IR-light. And a lot of animals can see this kind of light, but not necessarily both. Many Animals, especially insects, but also a lot of birds could see UV-light. It would be practical for humans if we could see UV-light, we could avoid places were the UV-light is to strong, or we could have seen the hole in the ozon layer with our own eyes. Unfortunatly most mammals have lost the ability to see ultraviolet light. But on the other hand there would be no special effect with black light in a night club or in movies with a CSI investigation anymore. If we could see infrared light we would need quite good shades to protect our eyes from it, as we otherwise couldn't see much on a hot day outside, but for the night it would be practical. For most mammals it was most energy effective to have only three or less different photoreceptor cell in our eyes to see the world in enough different colors.
@@red.aries1444I think there would still be UV light invisible to our eyes, it would simply mean the visible spectrum would be bigger and UV would start higher up on the scale. Unless you suggest in that scenario we would see all of the UV spectrum.
Well, it's visible because we are biologically equipped to detect it, not because it's in plenty.... Most of the UV light is blocked by Ozone layer btw
@@jamesochan2898 - The point is that "we are biologically equipped to detect it" *_because_* it is plenty, and it was therefore advantageous to _develop_ those biological mechanisms. Organisms that focused on detecting solar UV (or some other uncommon type of radiation) were at a disadvantage compared to the ones that got good at detecting the types that there's plenty of.
Using wind and/or solar to raise a mass vertically with a motor and then using the motor as a generator on the way down is up to 90% efficient. Slightly more efficient than pumped hydro.
The new layer which converts visible light to UV might altogether *remove the need for any silicon or any semiconductor,* since UV light can generate photoelectrons from metals... Depending on the energy of the UV photons and the particular metal.
I’ve been creating chemical bonds and storing the changed chemicals into long term storage then adding energy to make them unstable and create a runaway reaction since I’ve been five years old. That’s when I used wood to create my first fire. Quite inefficient but does work well.
I think the easiest way to store energy is to pour gas over a photonic discharge and tangentially replace the ionic surface with a thermal implosion that resists a polar conversion from the one to the other. Then factor in pi, preferably a chicken and mushroom one, and Robert is your father's brother! Simples! Surprised none of you thought of it before!!!!
It tells us a lot. So degradation starts to get measurable significant at around cycle 13(the shown picture already has roughly 10% degradation visible @ 3:49) and the results were not very promising as it comes to 50 or 100 cycles. As nobody could tell us they stopped at cycle 12 and not tested up to 50 or 100 cycles, so if they do not tell us the results then because the results doesn't look good and you still want to get a new project funding for going further (hoping you get it more stable) the next 2-3 years.
@ I was mostly listening and missed that cycle 13 part. I was more referencing that things like batteries or catalysts that have to do similar things are tested upwards of hundreds to thousands of times. If it’s showing 10% loss at 13 cycles this is pretty short of a breakthrough in my opinion.
@@Techmagus76Surprisingly, Sabina says they basically found no degradation. (And shows the thumbs up) So I have to agree with Jaxomh, 12 cycles doesn't say much about even the short term stability.
Only problem is the massive investment needed. This is why I get very annoyed when people claim green energy is cheap. When you factor in the cost of either storage or backup, it's very expensive. It's the full cost that should be compared against other sources e.g. nuclear.
@@traumflug Yep, depends on where you look. I'm in Saskatchewan, a province about as flat as a horizontal board. A change in height of about 1,100 metres over a distance of 1,100 kilometres.
@@philiphumphrey1548 Depending on the permitting, quite inexpensive per MWh stored. Greatly benefits from pairing with Lithium batteries, and those are dirt-cheap.
All v interesting but the pumping water up to use as hydroelectric power source is already in use, is very efficient and has a proven record. It is a major component in the UK's National Grid to cope with energy spikes.
Hi Sabine. Electrical utility employee here. No need to build a mountain, just a lake. We regularly pump water back up into the lake in periods of high production low usage, and then run it through hydro generation when needed. Basically the lake is a giant battery.
@@dandare1001 Well, you need a drop, that's true. But it only has to have the water fall from above the turbine. There's a station inside a Welsh mountain that uses this method as a fast response to load changes. It's another situation where having your generating installations on the coast as you can pump sea water up to storage facilities in a great many locations. Full disclosure is that I am a recently retired power T&D SCADA engineer and renewables are an almighty pain in the rear. Their production is unpredictable and of terrible 'quality' requiring expensive equipment to smooth out the dreadful spikes. Nuke stations are a vastly better idea and better in every way but the Greens have everyone convinced we'll all die if we dare build some.
Interesting but still at the conceptual stage as you say. Concentrated solar heats molten salt and generates energy when it’s dark by running the molten salt through a steam turbine, which works quite well, even if you don’t want the sun to burn through the solar connector or the salt to solidify both for hopefully obvious reasons
I'm definitely going to watch this development. A direct phase change to electricity conversion would be ideal and the metastable state has no self loss characteristics like chemical storage such as intercalation.
As someone who has experience in applied sciences, the scalability and sustainability of reservoir storage sounds much better than thermal solar molecular storage. The molecules need to come from somewhere, and the energy stored per unit mass will be very small as no bonds are being formed. Not only that, converting a temp gradient to something useful like electricity is very inefficient as well. This idea is basically DoA. Fun watching 'physicists' not understand what they are talking about - I guess dreamers are dreamers.
if were talking about excited molecules, we would be converting their excitations into electricity via electrochemical reactions possible only in the excited state, not their temp gradient. the energy stored will likely be small, but we already have the energy. if the medium is cheap and easy to make, it doesnt matter much if we need a lot of it. we will just make a lot of it.
Agreed. A similar, technologically mature system is zeolite that release energy by adsorption of humidity and regenerate by solar. It was never commercialized due to the problems you mentioned
If you have experience in applied sciences, then perhaps you should look up the scale of the need, transmission losses, and the lack of suitable sites for hydro storage.
Just an option: Consider the enzyme carbonic anhydrase. This enzyme facilitates the cleaving of carbonic acid (such as in the soft drinks people buy at any fast food restaurant) back to CO2 and water. If you were to compress CO2 and water against a surface coated with carbonic anhydrase, but remove the enzyme before reducing pressure, then you could probably create carbonic acid as well as cleaving it. Carbonic acid is not a "high density" fuel source, but it is non-toxic and incredibly cheap. I have to wonder if there is any way to create a fuel cell which consumes carbonic acid (perhaps with a carbonic anhydrase aid) to produce electricity more directly? If one could create a sealed loop of CO2+H2O->carbonic acid->CO2+H2O in a loop, then it might make a nice energy storage mechanism without a lot of the toxicity issues of other methods.
I store solar energy in a natural photochemical way. After laying on the beach for a couple of hours , I gathered all energy to jump in the sea. It is called invigorating solar energy storage, aka ISES.
Now, I thought you were going to say you release it tossing and turning all night because of your sunburn. Kinetic Release of Incident Solar Pain....KRISP
0:57 We have been using pumped hydro for a long time in Australia and it works exceptionally well, but storage capacity is limited by scale as you say. > I think scale is always going to be the roadblock for any storage solution. Energy/entropy does not like to be static and will always be pushing toward that high state. aka it doesn't like being forced to go backwards and it doesn't like to be caged up lol . I think the other side is that we have very inefficient methods for making use of energy/entropy if you consider how much is lost (not used) in the transition.
I stumbled on this paper a couple of weeks ago and was also impressed. What impressed me was the energy density (~1000 Kj/kg), which is many times higher than the heat capacity of water, which is often used as thermal mass for passive energy storage. If they could find a molecule that would strain with photons at >380nm, then it could be charged with passive solar, which could be a game changer.
The problem with molecular energy density is that it doesn't scales well. Yes, if a single molecule weighted 1kg, then it could store 1000 kJ, but what they've done is measured in micrograms and nanojoules and those don't scale well, or maybe can't scale at all. FAI, how good is that molecule at conducting heat?
"It's visible because it's where most of the energy is." It makes sense that evolution would select for this, I've just never heard of it before. Aren't the ultraviolet and gamma spectrums more energetic? Is it that we see the middle of the bell curve, where most of the energy is, but the others are more energetic in themselves, but there's less of them? After some replies: Thanks everyone!
UV-, X- , gamma- rays, yes higher energy levels, but it hardly crosses the atmosphere. Just the visible and parts of the infrared spectrum comes through.
Yes, the energy of any individual uv or gamma ray photon is higher, but most of the photons from the sun are not in that range. So I am talking about the total energy.
@@SabineHossenfelder Do you think life would evolve to utilize higher energy photons around a 'bluer' star? Or do you think they'd still be too destructive to permit life?
Recently, I started storing the concentrated light in old tortilla bags. This storage option is cheap and can be used at any time to illuminate solar cells on dark winter days.
Pumped hydro, thermal, chemical, even kinetic storage are all super-clean solutions for low-production-time power bridging. It's foolhardy to bet on one single solution.
[NODS] "Horses for courses", as the saying goes. You chose the most appropriate solution for each location/scenario. Concentrated solar with molten salt for deserts; Pumped hydro for mountainous regions; etc.
Plants harves energy from sunlight in the light reactions, and store the energy in the dark reactions. The dark reactions use Carbon Dioxide to make sugar. Sugar is stored as starch and fat. Lots of fuels can be synthesized with electricity. Ammonia can be used as fertilizer and fuel for instance.
Imagine a smart thermal battery made from photoswitch molecules. When sunlight hits these molecules, they change shape and store energy. This energy remains locked in until a small trigger of heat, light, or electricity is applied, causing the molecules to revert to their original shape and release the stored energy as heat.
The concept of a smart thermal battery using photoswitch molecules does not necessarily require traditional solar panels in the same way photovoltaic systems do. Here’s how it works: Energy Storage Mechanism Photoswitch molecules, such as norbornadiene (NBD) and azobenzene (AB) derivatives, absorb sunlight and undergo a photoisomerization process. This process converts the molecules into a metastable, high-energy state, effectively storing energy from the sunlight246. Integration with Solar Cells While solar panels are not required for the energy storage process itself, integrating these photoswitch molecules with solar cells can enhance the overall efficiency of solar energy harvesting. For example, researchers have added a layer of these photoswitching molecules to standard commercial silicon solar cells to reduce the heating effect caused by high-energy photons, thereby increasing the solar cell's efficiency2. Standalone Operation However, the photoswitch molecules can operate independently to store solar energy. When sunlight hits these molecules, they change shape and store energy, which can be released later upon application of a small trigger such as heat, light, or electricity456. In summary, while integrating photoswitch molecules with solar panels can be beneficial, it is not a strict requirement for the operation of these molecular solar thermal energy storage systems.
@Thomas-gk42 A smart thermal battery using photoswitch molecules stores energy from sunlight without needing traditional solar panels. These molecules undergo photoisomerization when exposed to sunlight, changing shape and locking in energy. This energy remains stored until a trigger, such as heat, light, or electricity, causes the molecules to revert to their original shape and release the energy as heat. While integrating these molecules with solar cells can enhance efficiency by reducing heating effects, it is not necessary. The photoswitch molecules can operate independently to capture and store solar energy. This system provides a novel approach to solar energy storage, leveraging molecular changes to store and release energy on demand.
Hope You don't mind constructive criticism, as I believe this could be also useful for the audience of this channel. I feel the need to correct Your statement regarding pumped storage, i.e., the sentence "building mountains next to lake doesn't scale very well" (0:54)😉. The statement is true, but also incorrect 🙃, because that's not how typically pumped storage is built. Usually, pumped storage is built in the places that already have suitable topographic conditions. Mountains surrounding the area are needed, which will be basis for an upper reservoir. You also need water, but it doesn't have to be a lake. However, You'll need difference of height between upper and lower reservoir fro such project to make sense. So finding proper location is a significant limitation. Nonetheless, 10 years ago it was still the energy storage with by far highest installed power, dwarfing other types of storage. I'm not up to date with situation nowadays. I've heard about a plenty of projects involving batteries, but I still think pumped storage could be the most abundant when it comes to installed power worldwide.
I guess the idea is form having to build it close to the solar power. To avoid having to transfer lots of power just for storage I guess So well other than needing the location you said, you also need it to be close to a good location for solar panels
Unless you think building mountains scales well, her statement was correct. And it's precisely because "it doesn't scale well" that it's only done "in the places that already have suitable topographic conditions". That was kind of the point of the joke: you can only do it in specific places, because the alternative would be to build your own mountains, which isn't economically viable.
@@MaakaSakuranbo I wouldn't fully agree with Your statement to be honest. Both can be connected to the grid. Also scales would be different. In EU solar farms are rather small (very often order of magnitude of 1 MW installed power) and pumped storage can easily be >100 MW, even getting close to 1 GW.
Actual question (no "/s"): if there were a way to install solar panels around the world such that at any time in the day the energy need would be satisfied by the solar panels on the bright side of the world and at least one country in each time zone shared its energy generation and consumption with at least one country for each other timezone, would we need batteries?
Would have to use radio waves to transmit around a satellite system. If you ever played sim city 2000, you might be familiar with the problems this can cause...
Transmission losses are the killer for all the coolest megaprojects. You can get even more solar energy concentration in space, but by the time you get it to people on the ground, you've lost most of it and possibly masered several birds to death. I think my current favorite one weird trick to minimize the losses (and aviocide) are orbital rings, which would cost literally all the money in the world to build but could transmit solar power around the planet _kinda_ reliably... but you'd still have to worry about losses as heat or whatever.
The issue is most of the chemicals you showed would likely have significant toxicity based on their chemical structure. Its an interesting approach and we might be able to identify other compounds, but you are right that there is alot of loss converting from light, to electric, to chemical, to heat, to electricity. Compare that to solar which doesn't have that additional heat stage to convert back to electricity. I don't think that this stage it has much potential (pun not intended), but it is interesting and might lead to new ideas.
Round trip efficiency is decent (on par with batteries), but the required infrastructure is massive and expensive... unless you already have the lake and dam. For countries with hydro installations, it makes a lot of sense to add pumps. to top up the reservoir. For other countries, not so much.
You have made your solution too specific. Look at it in a more general sense - you see the simplest solution as storing potential energy in a fluid. The fluid doesn't have to be water, it could be air. If you store compressed air, you aren't limited by geography or climate.
@@DanBeech-ht7sw 400 bar tanks are not cheap and have energetic failure modes when incorrectly made or not properly maintained.. As is they can send fragmentation for hundreds of meters beyond the zone of total destruction.
@@DanBeech-ht7sw Compressed air has efficiency challenges compared to water. Compressed air has capital cost challenges compared to pump hydro, where pump storage is feasible. Given that compressed air storage is using technology that has been in active use for 100 years, I'm dubious that there will significant reduction in cost. I think RedOx flow batteries hold more promise for a cost break through .
I'm designing an off grid house right now, for Northern Idaho. It seems like to store the power for the worst couple of weeks of the year drives up the required amount of batteries by something like 5 fold. Since batteries don't last forever, this isn't feasible even with LiFePo batteries at $200/kWh. The lowest hanging fruit seems to be installing highly insulated storm shutters that can rolled in front of my sliding glass doors in sub zero F periods. The next is to accept that I might need to run a generator off of propane when it is cold and cloudy. After that, a couple of small wood stoves. Then, there is renting a trencher and putting in a ground loop to preheat the air going into the air exchange Mini Split. That isn't particularly expensive, but its like R&D rather installing a product, so it's probably not going to help me get a building permit. I won't be able to test it until I need it.
@@jake12466 Battery power would be technically incorrect. The attribute would be battery storage capacity. And in provisioning you really don't care about the number of plastic boxes, since by getting bigger batteries you might have fewer batteries.
As far as I know they’ve pretty much cracked sodium-ion battery’s. BYD is building their first commercial plant. If that takes off as expected there really won’t be much need for all these exotic solutions.
@@samgragas8467we've seen this sort of nonsense before, for example lead-acid vs Nickel-Iron batteries. NiFe caught on in niche markets (industrial & submarines spring to mind) but in mass markets like the electric cars they were invented for stuck with the vastly inferior lead-acid & the car market collapsed as a result when petrol started catching on in the early 1900s 😢
I'm pretty sure god first said "Let there be light!", and then he said "shit, I can't see anything. Let's try again... Let there be light... MOSTLY IN THE VISIBLE RANGE!" Then he saw the light good.
I love that expression "so keep dusting those solar panels" :) But I'm afraid to ask :/ isn't it in the wrong context here? I mean if we have good and cheap energy storage options dusting those solar panels would be even more important, wouldn't it? ;)
U say that like it's all a lie to be ignored. Solar has a theoretical limit that works on paper, but we've never gotten close to that in reality. Other hypotheses show less effectiveness compared to reality because other factors come into play which boost it. Until we actually try to implement it, we won't know whether we're short or overhyping it.
Very interesting, but for simplicity's sake, the reservoir method solves 2 problems in one community project; electricity generation and potential irrigation (Netflix on the Azores shows a very simple working model), and for flat plains communities, a multi-tiered subterranean well system where energy is used to pump water to homes on the surface, municipal drains collect and route water back to the upper-level water treatment reservoir, where it is released through some kind of turbine to lower-level storage tanks. Or, of course, the same could be done with a water tower and a turbine installed next door to top up residential Tesla Walls through a grid. A cone shaped turbine, similar to a jet turbine engine, could probably be suspended in a water-filled canister to reduce friction (if you could get a whirlpool effect started and maintained, you'd probably get some extra force acting on the turbine). The Airpod engine/drive mechanism, but using water?
Sabine are you impressed by Valadium redox flow batteries? Invented by Maria Skyllas-Kazacos in Australia in the 70's. Apparently, they can be taken to zero charge without damage, their charge doesn't degrade as much over time as other types of batteries, they can be refurbished after a decade's long life cycle, are not flammable or toxic. The largest one in China is 100MW/400MWH. I love your show / work / humor. Stay amazing.
one energy store i've seen that is interesting is solar panel-in-carbon blocks. solar panels can only absorb part of the spectrum, the rest goes to heat. That doesn't matter if the solar panel is embedded in a hot block of carbon, any infra-red that can't be captured just maintains heat. Upside - much better heat->electricity conversion with no mechanical parts. Storing and generating heat is easy. you can optimise your panels for a known temperature surroundings. Downside - your "solar" panels are hotter than normal, which limits your efficiency and material choice. Can't extract heat below a specific temperature, as the infra-red no longer emits at high enough frequency.
Photosynthetic plants have known about this and using this for millions of years. The energy from the sun source is formed into carbohydrates and stored inside them.
LFP are actually starting to get pretty affordable now and more practical than pump storage. Although I have seen studies on pump storage that indicated that it is actually very fiable on a large scale it is just more expensive than LFP. However, it is always good to keep on searching for better options.
Mechanical storage for termic energy is possible with expansion metal - red mercury insid small balls. This could highly simply store termic energy in nuclear reactors, as well termopara is quite efficient possibility to extract stord energy in energetic buffors with termic pomps peltier modules to powers up termopara
There are also Lead Carbon Batteries they dont degrade as much as + faster charging as standard lead acid batteries, cheaper and not an explosive risk like lithium ion, they are heavy but for long term storage doesnt matter. I believe even China is backing this as well.
Graphene batteries are making rounds in military applications (although they are still at an early development stage) They are higher in energy density, lighter and more efficient. I think it's one of the most feasible steps forward in energy storage.
If the energy is leaving the molecules as heat, the Carnot cycle will limit how much of the heat can be turned to something else. Batteries are so great because they are not subject to the Carnot cycle (they are not heat engines)
We do NOT need to "build mountains with lakes." We would, however, have to beef up existing hydroelectric capacity 3 to 5 fold. The rest simply comes from pumping water upstream during peak solar times.
Would using UV LED bulbs to trigger the storage material be more efficient? You could then store the energy in one specialized location and release it into the grid at the appropriate time.
Yep, thats super interesting! I guess if this kind of techology could be scaled up, could be made more efficient, it would basically all be in one unit, a solar panel with an underlying energy storage panel underneath? That would be quite neat because a company could then sell self-contained units that can release a steady output of energy throughout the day, even at night, without any further storage/ cable / installation requirements.
Ionic fluid iron-air batteries are really cheap and easy make. They aren't used because they a big heavy slow charging brutes but that is perfect for grid level storage.
Physics says that you need to build some "energy barriers" (that can be easily removed on demand) to store energy. And these barriers will degrade over time, no matter what it is in practice. So you need to spend more energy to build storage (build barriers+remove barriers) than you store energy. So the choice of the storage type depends mainly on the financial costs and participation in the economy of the country.
photochemical energy storage is intriguing, but the practical engineering is challenging. Ensuring photons connect with specialized molecules across a vast surface area without over- or under-saturating them would require a complex transport system to cycle saturated molecules out and fresh ones in. This involves substantial energy for circulation across large solar collectors, plus costly reticulation networks and pumps. Long-term stability and molecule replacement are also key. It’s an idea worth tracking once scaled beyond the lab bench, to validate if it can overcome these implementation hurdles.
Gravity storage through hydroelectric works very well. I think it has a pretty good efficiency percentage too. Technically anything better than 0% is better than not using storage
Interesting, but my favourite new way to store energy stays the underwater pump storage from the Fraunhofer Institute. Basically a concrete ball that gets submerged 7-800m. This way, it has a decent height difference but needs less effort to be built. There were tests in Germany and in the beginning of the month they started first tests in California. Unless they find a way to fuck up the material selection, it looks perfect to me.
Well, when the explanation started I thought it was about my idea for energy storage. It comes from those supersaturated sodium acetate heat pads. The idea is simple. Find a salt like sodium acetate but one that gets much hotter, in excess of 100 degrees C. Then use its exothermic reaction to boil water and use solar power to melt the crystals and prime the substance for another exothermic reaction. There are some issues remaining like moving around the solid crystalized form of the salt and insulating the whole thing, but those sound like solvable issues. As such the biggest issue is that I have no clue how to find out the theoretical efficiency of the system.
I heard about storing heat in a salt (baking powder). It seems to be cheap and still very energy dense. It has a few test locations running it, at least one in Holland and one in France. Sabine, i'd love to hear your opinion about it although I know you're not a big fan of heat storage.
Still a nett energy consumer. A percentage of what you're attempting to store is expressed as heat, dissipated & unusable, can be captured but decays rapidly. There's always been 3 simple rules with elec storage. 1. You will never win. 2. You cant break even. 3. You will always lose!
How do you feel about gravity batteries? Deep hole, heavy weight on a cable. Mechanical failure could be disastrous without a good failsafe, but i like it in concept.
Energy could be stored with pressurised air. Efficiency might be lower, but even low efficiency is useful in some cases if cost is low. A lot of solar power is wasted.
We already have a system such that the Sun modifies molecules into a higher energy state. And with the application of a small amount of energy to start the reverse process those molecules will lose all that stored energy. It's called a tree and a fireplace.
4:00 Lithium Ion Batteries have an efficiency of higher than 99%. Otherwise they would degraded way quicker. Transforming Energy from alternating to direct current and Back might reduce efficiency slightly, but surely it is closer to 95 % rather than 80 %.
when i was younger i remember imagining a battery for a sci-fy concept similar to this. I just tought it sounded "real" enough. i explained it to claude and asked it to summarize. "Imagine a battery made of a container filled with a special liquid. The liquid molecules have an uneven electromagnetic field (similar to how water molecules are polar). When you charge the battery, instead of storing energy through chemical reactions like normal batteries, the free electrons get "trapped" in the spaces between these molecules due to their uneven electromagnetic fields. As more electrons get stored, they create pressure in the liquid, making it become more rigid (like a very thick fluid) while still not chemically bonding with the molecules. When discharged, the electrons would flow out, and the liquid would return to its normal state. Think of it like tiny electromagnetic bottles (the spaces between molecules) that can temporarily hold electrons without permanently capturing them - more like a parking space than a chemical bond. The key innovation here is storing electrical energy through spatial containment rather than chemical bonds, potentially allowing for faster charge/discharge cycles and longer battery life since there's no chemical degradation."
Gravity towers need to be researched a lot more. Electric motor efficiency above 90% means storage losses would be kept at a minimum and gravity remains a constant. Similar to dams but can be constructed virtually anywhere.
Energy density. Concrete is about 3x more dense than water. So to replace a huge reservoir, you have to lift 1/3 as much concrete. That's too big and too expensive. Maybe an extremely deep hole could help, but that's also expensive.
Looks like something to keep an ion. 👁️ 🤔
Punny!
@@aaronjennings8385 Phunny
Are you positive?
@@ChuckSwiger 😂⚡
😳
There's also the problem of scaling up. That gentle little slightly exothermic chemical reaction in a test tube can get extremely violent when you have huge quantities of it. You are going to be storing large quantities of a metastable chemical. If it starts to decompose, you'll almost certainly get heat building up faster than it can escape and then a runaway reaction.
a guy back in the day put a Lot of irom filings and sulphur in a hole... it was 'much more exciting' than the small scale one
Nah, because you never get the amount of density. Only the surface layer perhaps 1 to 2 mm can be charged. Its really a useless option since you never get enough usable thermal energy out of it.
This
Well if you mean they will all start decomposing to the thermodynamically stable structure then sure. This could be dangerous for sure but I would imagine that you could engineer a way to manage it. Smaller cells with low thermal conductivity separators perhaps? As long as the cells can stand up to their maximum potential heat output then it should be contained. Not an engineer so just throwing ideas around.
That's one thing that most people never realize: a storage with high enough energy density in the end is in most cases nothing less than a potential explosive device. And this is the exact reason why we will never have much more efficient batteries in our consumer products - it all comes down to security reasons.
Sabine, there is also a new one using, basically, rust. That might be quite interesting.
Yes! Been meaning to talk about this for some while, but I am waiting for some newsworthy development.
"Rust never sleeps"
@@SabineHossenfelder Regarding hydro storage, there is an alternative to building mountains with lakes next to them. One can use the bottom of the sea and hollow concrete spheres that serve as a reservoir. You may want to check out the corresponding research of the Fraunhofer Institute for storing energy in the sea this way.
@@davidlong1786 Are you thinking of Neil Young?
Different principle. You can't store energy in rust.
I like this one. They may well be on track. If they find the right molecules and the right crystallization or other arrangement it is ideal. I guess they have to optimize both the stability of the molecule, and the convenience with which energy can be stored and released on demand. I see the paper in the notes below the video. THANK YOU! I AM impressed but now it is the job of improving the most efficient cell as you say!
Efficiency is not the be-all and end-all.
Compressed air storage - a 19th century solution - is cheap, easily scaleable, reasonably efficient (pushing 70%) and has far fewer recycling issues than lithium ion batteries, etc. But because it's not "fashionable" it receives very little attention, unfortunately.
Back to Alchemy lads
@@dw620 I posted a comment about liquid air batteries which I think is just the new name for this to make it sound sexier
It’s fake maths
@@dw620 Are You talking about CAES? (I presume yes)
It is indeed scalable (installation in Huntorf). However, there is the same issue as with pumped-storage - at larger scale You are dependent on availability of suitable localisation (depleted salt mines). Also, it's based on gas turbine, so You need gas (with its own significantly high carbon footprint).
I would like to correct the statement at 3:42, which is unfortunately wrong. First, the highlighted Jablonski-like diagram refers to the aryl-norbornadiene, which is the active photo-isomerisation educt, not the additional triplet sensitizer (MeOTX or Ir(ppy)3) added to the energy storage device. Second, the authors do not convert the sunlight from the visible range to the UV. This could be theoretically done by e.g. a triplet-triplet annihilation up-conversion molecular system, but here this is not the case. Instead, the additional compound (which absorbs visible light) is sensitizing the ArNB triplet via triplet-triplet energy transfer, which then directly undergoes photo-isomerisation from the triplet excited state without direct excitation/population of the higher singlet excited state via UV light. Anyway, keep up the nice work!
Easy for you to say!
@@Philip-t2j since Im currently doing my PhD in the field of photochemistry and I know a little bit about the NBD QC reaction (+ I read the paper of Kerzig et al.), yes it is. But feel free to correct me wrong.
@@xul645 Philip wasn't suggestion your wrong, but your statements come across as techno babble since he knows nothing about photochemistry. I am sure your analysis was spot on, but like Phillip I know very little about photochemistry.
That said, This seems useless, since for a solid state panel, only the surface area exposed to light can be energized, so very little energy can be stored, & stored thermal energy in a solid state solar panel is also pretty useless (no practical way to extract energy).
@@guytech7310Yeah you are right, my answer was very scientific and I admit that my reply was maybe too harsh. I am sorry for that. Thats why Im not a science communicator and thats why I appreciate the work of Sabines channel (I really like, that she highlighted an interesting concept for photochemical energy storage).
You are correct, but the presented study by the Kerzig group is done in solution (energy storage reaction does not take place in solid state here). That would be another major point of criticism from my side. This video may confuse the general audience in that regard, since she mentions the term "intermediate layer" in the above mentioned part. The general concept is as follows: A NBD chromophore absorbs light and is converted to QC (the photoisomer). This initial process is followed by a second, on demand reaction, that generates heat and regenerates the original reactant NBD. QC is the corresponding stable higher energy isomer. The latter then releases its energy as heat by reversing to the parent NBD on thermal excitation or preferently via catalytic activation. The idea is in simple words the following: The solution (once activated by light absorption) can heat up like a pot of water on a hot plate whenever you want (the storage part of the story), if you just switch on the hot plate (trigger the back-reaction of the photo-isomerisation cycle). The efficiency of this overall process is of course, let say questionable :D
@@xul645 Please forgive my lame attempt at humor. Ok, I'll show myself out.
A similar idea has been around for decades and it's called eutectic salts. It stores heat in the phase change of a substance (heat of fusion) converting it from solid to liquid. Heat is extracted when the substance cools and returns to a solid. Water is an example of this but the phase change happens at a temperature too low to take advantage of. The eutectic salts have a phase change at much higher temperatures.
Storing energy as heat isn't really acceptable as the theoretical efficiency is maybe 80%. This seems to be closer to the latter, at least in theory
This has been done for decades , Solar thermal plants use molten salts to store energy. Issue is solidification in pipes, corrosion & caking damaging circulation pumps. What the industry is seeking is solid state solutions that don't need any pumps or pipes to move energy. That said, Pump Hydro is probably the best economical solution. Use PV\Wind to run water pumps, and than use water turbines to supply continuous\stable power to the grid. That said the issue is providing enough PV & wind to keep the reservoir full. with PV, you need about 6 times the power output to keep the reservoir full (presume 5.5hrs of insolation per day, 5.5 * 6 = 33hrs per day, but assume power conversion losses & overcast days.
She mentions this and discusses that techniques like this previously worked with the high temperatures achievable with concentrated solar power.
@@eloquentemu Hydro storage isn’t 80% efficient. It’s about 80% at the electrical production end, 60% at the pumping end for about 48% efficiency through the cycle.
@russbell6418 everything I've read, and I just rechecked, indicate that the total round trip efficiency is 70-80+ even with evaporation included. Do you have a source?
I love that you used Transformers to demonstrate molecular bonds being broken.
I wasn't expecting a partsforming example here of all places
I know it's important to bring light to bad science, but how much more joy gives to my heart bringing up good ones.
❤❤ You are great!
Really this thing Sabine is absolutely wrong about everything. Even Politics.
Hi Sabine, I thank you for your seemingly endless output of science communication. I find stories about what's happening in science and technology very interesting and very much enjoy your TH-cam channel. I find it especially valuable as you are so immune to hype. Today's video was particularly interesting to me in both these respects, as I had not heard of molecular solar thermal before, which was interesting, and you mentioned that even with a ten-fold increase in its efficiency it's only at 5.8%.
I don't know how you will take the following comment but I will try to state it anyway. In the two or three times recently where you have talked about solar photo-voltaic, you've used the phrase "Keep dusting the solar panels." Today's video actually ends with that phrase. While the phrase is, I guess, true, it's also demeaning. Such a phrase is, for example, a gift to some of the politicians here in Australia who are hell bent on protecting fossil fuel interests and use the guise of protecting farmers to argue against wind and solar generation. the phrase, for me at least, distracted from the useful information in the video.
Anyway, if you are (still?) reading this I much appreciate it. Kind regards, Sean
I have a very small roof with only eleven panels, so the dusting work is manageable.✌Your content is💯% interesting, always a pleasure to watch.
Happy you like it!
Thnx for all the videos...dont worry abt the noise.... keep going as usual like we have been for years!!!
Hi Sabine! Love your channel! The energy storage method I like is the sand “battery”. It’s inexpensive, easy and if done right, can safely store heat that can later be used to heat buildings, or provide heat to run a steam powered generator
It sounds interesting, although I imagine it would have a pretty low energy storage capacity (J/m^3) compared to other methods. Changing the bonds of A slightly to create another molecule B that can almost always revert back to the original molecule A would likely require very few changes to the bonds being possible at those energy levels, and you need a molecule for each bond. Compare that to a lithium cell, where most components are much smaller and lighter than these molecules and the ionisation energy is likely to be significantly greater than the usable energy stored in the molecular bonds.
10x lower storage density; 50x cheaper -> win! That said, I've yet to see a lithium cell charging by just shining light on it.
@traumflug haha fair. As long as it's not used for cars, I guess the density isn't that important a factor. Cost, production rate, and footprint per unit energy storage are more important than energy density. It would be interesting if the technology gets used somewhere in practice.
When might the technology to use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into stored glucose and starch become possible?
That´s photosynthesis. But it´s not very efficient what plants do, photovoltaics is much better.
I wonder whether there are any chemists working on an improved version of photosynthesis. Perhaps somebody here knows. It might even need expertise from physicists!
Carbon dioxide is to dense to much room much energy. .it as a gas traps heat by reflecting it back
@@Thomas-gk42 But it can do long term storage -- which is what coal is.
Plant trees!
As we approach 10 billion humans all wanting cheap abundant energy in diverse geological, climate and cultural environments it is clear we need many generation and storage strategies.
Lets hope the engineers can build out the science in them all, including this one.
Thank you Sabine for your lucid and reasonable analysis.
As an aside it is shame we cannot harvest hyberbole energy. Our problems would all be solved immediately.
If only stupidity could be used for something useful, the supply is infinite!
The US operates over 250 fission reactors. The only fatal incident from a reactor anomaly was in 1961 with the experimental reactor SL-1 (Over 700 people die per year from natural gas). Safe disposal of spent fuel has been solved. Why are we still searching for a "clean" energy source again?
@@xxmrrickxx Turns out the greenest color was Cherenkov blue all along.
@@xxmrrickxx My wife found Fukushima debris on a beach in California. That's why.
Probably never make it to ten billion people, and the world population will be about four billion by 2100
Within this system, you do in fact have bond formation/breaking on charging/release in the form of [2+2] cycloaddition. It's intramolecular, so you still end up with one molecule at the end. Also, there's plenty of other molecules of this type (photochromes, or photoswitches) which are being investigated for the same purpose. The two that are favourites of physical chemists are azobenzene and dithienylethene (DTE).
The water lift idea is the best.
Start small and work up to filling Lake Bonneville.
Thanks for exposing this intriguing approach. As a current user of multiple Powerwalls, I hope they make rapid progress on efficiency and commercialization.
Hydro storage is around 4x time cheaper than battery storage if you compare amount energy storage. But only apply if you have favourable location, also hydro storage usually have secondary function for flood protection. In Poland one of major pump storage was plan to take 10 year to fill up but manage to fill up in a few months after finish due take entire flood wave by this alone pay for itself due prevent property damage worth more that build cost.
Yeah those locations are very rare
True. That said, battery storage is still getting cheaper. We're now near €50/kWh, so that '4x' might be gone before too long. Also, here in Germany pretty much all valleys are densely populated, so building hydro storage would mean relocating hundreds of families.
@@traumflug Still we need use all available places for hydro storage due they second function is flood protection not mention that is we compare lifetime cost of this systems by 50years mark hydro is 16x cheaper
What I don't understand it's why we don't just use hydro at night and solar during the day. Everyone is talking about new hydro storage rather than just using existing hydro more cleverly.
@@2bfrank657 We do. At least here in Germany and Switzerland. It just happens that there's only hydro storage for some 5-10% capacity in Germany. Depopulating dozens of densely populated valleys for sufficient capacity isn't exactly popular.
It may be only about 5% but it can last longer, and it is so cool how the ultraviolet is used. It's 🤯,man. Instant sub👍
Most of the solar energy is in the visible range. Well, it is visible because it is where most of the energy is. Well said.
Because of the same reason water and air are colourless (for earthlings)
There is also a lot of energy in UV- and IR-light. And a lot of animals can see this kind of light, but not necessarily both. Many Animals, especially insects, but also a lot of birds could see UV-light. It would be practical for humans if we could see UV-light, we could avoid places were the UV-light is to strong, or we could have seen the hole in the ozon layer with our own eyes. Unfortunatly most mammals have lost the ability to see ultraviolet light. But on the other hand there would be no special effect with black light in a night club or in movies with a CSI investigation anymore.
If we could see infrared light we would need quite good shades to protect our eyes from it, as we otherwise couldn't see much on a hot day outside, but for the night it would be practical.
For most mammals it was most energy effective to have only three or less different photoreceptor cell in our eyes to see the world in enough different colors.
@@red.aries1444I think there would still be UV light invisible to our eyes, it would simply mean the visible spectrum would be bigger and UV would start higher up on the scale. Unless you suggest in that scenario we would see all of the UV spectrum.
Well, it's visible because we are biologically equipped to detect it, not because it's in plenty.... Most of the UV light is blocked by Ozone layer btw
@@jamesochan2898 - The point is that "we are biologically equipped to detect it" *_because_* it is plenty, and it was therefore advantageous to _develop_ those biological mechanisms. Organisms that focused on detecting solar UV (or some other uncommon type of radiation) were at a disadvantage compared to the ones that got good at detecting the types that there's plenty of.
Wait isnt there very energetic radiation that we cant see?
Fascinating! Something like that could indeed help a bunch, Sabine!!! 😮
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Sabine,
danke für deine informativen Videos. Ich liebe deinen Sarkasmus und deine Selbstironie.
Das beste was Deutschland seit Jahren exportiert hat.😉
Wow, it's practically readable to English speakers without translation!
Sabine,
thanks for thy informative videos. I love thy sarcasm and thy self-irony.
I get why it is easy for English speakers.
Using wind and/or solar to raise a mass vertically with a motor and then using the motor as a generator on the way down is up to 90% efficient. Slightly more efficient than pumped hydro.
"I think this is a development to have an eye on."
I see what you did there, Sabine!
The new layer which converts visible light to UV might altogether *remove the need for any silicon or any semiconductor,* since UV light can generate photoelectrons from metals... Depending on the energy of the UV photons and the particular metal.
4:29 why the guys ear is so small
Normal human variation. Why your brain so small?
Reptilian for sure 😂 @@Ge1Ri4
Ai ear?
Black dudes sometimes have tiny ears.
It does seem odd. Doesn't look like AI really though
I’ve been creating chemical bonds and storing the changed chemicals into long term storage then adding energy to make them unstable and create a runaway reaction since I’ve been five years old. That’s when I used wood to create my first fire. Quite inefficient but does work well.
4:50 _"I think this is a development to have an _*_ion_*_ ..."_
Eye see what you did there... 😁
Sounds good! Hope it is feasible with development.
We could store the energy in hydrocarbons which could be reacted with oxygen to release the energy
i see what you did there
In fact the name of this process is photosynthesis...
Good one!.
@@ernestodejosue607 which is highly inefficient...
@@ernestodejosue607combustion
I think the easiest way to store energy is to pour gas over a photonic discharge and tangentially replace the ionic surface with a thermal implosion that resists a polar conversion from the one to the other. Then factor in pi, preferably a chicken and mushroom one, and Robert is your father's brother! Simples! Surprised none of you thought of it before!!!!
There is light! (hopefully the tunnel will not be too long) 🌻
Compressed air, that's the neatest solution. Crondall Energy and MAN Energy Solutions already offer systems based on this.
12 cycles without degradation doesn’t tell us much.
It tells us a lot. So degradation starts to get measurable significant at around cycle 13(the shown picture already has roughly 10% degradation visible @ 3:49) and the results were not very promising as it comes to 50 or 100 cycles. As nobody could tell us they stopped at cycle 12 and not tested up to 50 or 100 cycles, so if they do not tell us the results then because the results doesn't look good and you still want to get a new project funding for going further (hoping you get it more stable) the next 2-3 years.
@ I was mostly listening and missed that cycle 13 part. I was more referencing that things like batteries or catalysts that have to do similar things are tested upwards of hundreds to thousands of times. If it’s showing 10% loss at 13 cycles this is pretty short of a breakthrough in my opinion.
@@Techmagus76Surprisingly, Sabina says they basically found no degradation. (And shows the thumbs up)
So I have to agree with Jaxomh, 12 cycles doesn't say much about even the short term stability.
Well, to me, it means the washing machine is not made in China!?!
@@TomTomicMic LoL
To me it means a young lady should get pregnant before the age of 22.
3:06
Thank you for being causally correct.
Sabina check out iron flow batteries already being used by SMUD in california and will be used by LEAG in Germany.
I just use my imagination, but I do enjoy how everyone's presentations have been coming along ❤.
Gosh the future is fun 😊
Australian National University's map says top-quality pumped hydro sites are, in fact, NOT in short supply.
Only problem is the massive investment needed. This is why I get very annoyed when people claim green energy is cheap. When you factor in the cost of either storage or backup, it's very expensive. It's the full cost that should be compared against other sources e.g. nuclear.
Depends on where you look. Not much space left in Europe for building new ones. Current capacity only single-digit percentage of what's needed.
@@traumflug Yep, depends on where you look. I'm in Saskatchewan, a province about as flat as a horizontal board. A change in height of about 1,100 metres over a distance of 1,100 kilometres.
@@traumflugoh, you'd be surprised. Will need a few transmission lines but those are good for the system anyway.
@@philiphumphrey1548 Depending on the permitting, quite inexpensive per MWh stored. Greatly benefits from pairing with Lithium batteries, and those are dirt-cheap.
All v interesting but the pumping water up to use as hydroelectric power source is already in use, is very efficient and has a proven record. It is a major component in the UK's National Grid to cope with energy spikes.
Hi Sabine. Electrical utility employee here. No need to build a mountain, just a lake. We regularly pump water back up into the lake in periods of high production low usage, and then run it through hydro generation when needed. Basically the lake is a giant battery.
But the lake needs to be at a higher altitude than the power station. It's not possible everywhere.
The right geography for this is very limited.
@@dandare1001 Well, you need a drop, that's true. But it only has to have the water fall from above the turbine. There's a station inside a Welsh mountain that uses this method as a fast response to load changes. It's another situation where having your generating installations on the coast as you can pump sea water up to storage facilities in a great many locations.
Full disclosure is that I am a recently retired power T&D SCADA engineer and renewables are an almighty pain in the rear. Their production is unpredictable and of terrible 'quality' requiring expensive equipment to smooth out the dreadful spikes. Nuke stations are a vastly better idea and better in every way but the Greens have everyone convinced we'll all die if we dare build some.
@@brianjonker510 No, that's an old trope and ha been repeatedly debunked. It's not common, but it's also definitely not limited.
It might have helped to watch the video. Pumped storage was the very first type she mentioned.
Interesting but still at the conceptual stage as you say. Concentrated solar heats molten salt and generates energy when it’s dark by running the molten salt through a steam turbine, which works quite well, even if you don’t want the sun to burn through the solar connector or the salt to solidify both for hopefully obvious reasons
Highly productive on Monday mornings? (4:07) It sounds like Sabine should reconsider how she spends her weekends.
I'm definitely going to watch this development. A direct phase change to electricity conversion would be ideal and the metastable state has no self loss characteristics like chemical storage such as intercalation.
As someone who has experience in applied sciences, the scalability and sustainability of reservoir storage sounds much better than thermal solar molecular storage. The molecules need to come from somewhere, and the energy stored per unit mass will be very small as no bonds are being formed. Not only that, converting a temp gradient to something useful like electricity is very inefficient as well. This idea is basically DoA. Fun watching 'physicists' not understand what they are talking about - I guess dreamers are dreamers.
As a citizen of a flat country the scalability and sustainability of reservoir storage is.. NA
if were talking about excited molecules, we would be converting their excitations into electricity via electrochemical reactions possible only in the excited state, not their temp gradient. the energy stored will likely be small, but we already have the energy. if the medium is cheap and easy to make, it doesnt matter much if we need a lot of it. we will just make a lot of it.
Agreed. A similar, technologically mature system is zeolite that release energy by adsorption of humidity and regenerate by solar.
It was never commercialized due to the problems you mentioned
If you have experience in applied sciences, then perhaps you should look up the scale of the need, transmission losses, and the lack of suitable sites for hydro storage.
It's unfortunately the typical part of the science popularization in social media. New, exciting technologies sell well.
Just an option: Consider the enzyme carbonic anhydrase. This enzyme facilitates the cleaving of carbonic acid (such as in the soft drinks people buy at any fast food restaurant) back to CO2 and water. If you were to compress CO2 and water against a surface coated with carbonic anhydrase, but remove the enzyme before reducing pressure, then you could probably create carbonic acid as well as cleaving it. Carbonic acid is not a "high density" fuel source, but it is non-toxic and incredibly cheap. I have to wonder if there is any way to create a fuel cell which consumes carbonic acid (perhaps with a carbonic anhydrase aid) to produce electricity more directly? If one could create a sealed loop of CO2+H2O->carbonic acid->CO2+H2O in a loop, then it might make a nice energy storage mechanism without a lot of the toxicity issues of other methods.
I store solar energy in a natural photochemical way. After laying on the beach for a couple of hours , I gathered all energy to jump in the sea. It is called invigorating solar energy storage, aka ISES.
Now, I thought you were going to say you release it tossing and turning all night because of your sunburn.
Kinetic Release of Incident Solar Pain....KRISP
0:57 We have been using pumped hydro for a long time in Australia and it works exceptionally well, but storage capacity is limited by scale as you say.
>
I think scale is always going to be the roadblock for any storage solution. Energy/entropy does not like to be static and will always be pushing toward that high state. aka it doesn't like being forced to go backwards and it doesn't like to be caged up lol
.
I think the other side is that we have very inefficient methods for making use of energy/entropy if you consider how much is lost (not used) in the transition.
P.S. Pumped hydro is a good example of efficiency and recapturing some of the waste.
P.S. Pumped hydro is a good example of efficiency by recapturing some of the waste.
Why is it Gooble can't create a basic text box and forum system that actually works :(
I stumbled on this paper a couple of weeks ago and was also impressed. What impressed me was the energy density (~1000 Kj/kg), which is many times higher than the heat capacity of water, which is often used as thermal mass for passive energy storage. If they could find a molecule that would strain with photons at >380nm, then it could be charged with passive solar, which could be a game changer.
THIS ISN'T A SCIENCE PROBLEM BUT ENGINEERING ONE.
The problem with molecular energy density is that it doesn't scales well. Yes, if a single molecule weighted 1kg, then it could store 1000 kJ, but what they've done is measured in micrograms and nanojoules and those don't scale well, or maybe can't scale at all. FAI, how good is that molecule at conducting heat?
Thanks for the interesting information.
"It's visible because it's where most of the energy is." It makes sense that evolution would select for this, I've just never heard of it before. Aren't the ultraviolet and gamma spectrums more energetic? Is it that we see the middle of the bell curve, where most of the energy is, but the others are more energetic in themselves, but there's less of them?
After some replies: Thanks everyone!
UV-, X- , gamma- rays, yes higher energy levels, but it hardly crosses the atmosphere. Just the visible and parts of the infrared spectrum comes through.
Yes, the energy of any individual uv or gamma ray photon is higher, but most of the photons from the sun are not in that range. So I am talking about the total energy.
@@SabineHossenfelder Do you think life would evolve to utilize higher energy photons around a 'bluer' star? Or do you think they'd still be too destructive to permit life?
It's not about the energy of individual photons, it's about how many the Sun emits, and how many of those reach the surface of the Earth.
@@JHe-f9t Problem with life around blue stars is, these stars have a very short life time
Recently, I started storing the concentrated light in old tortilla bags. This storage option is cheap and can be used at any time to illuminate solar cells on dark winter days.
Pumped hydro, thermal, chemical, even kinetic storage are all super-clean solutions for low-production-time power bridging. It's foolhardy to bet on one single solution.
[NODS] "Horses for courses", as the saying goes. You chose the most appropriate solution for each location/scenario. Concentrated solar with molten salt for deserts; Pumped hydro for mountainous regions; etc.
Nobody is betting on a single solution. Inventing a new solution doesnt mean were going to go break all the hydro pumped storage dams
@@therealpbristowand chemical batteries for cities where dispatchable power is needed.
How much battery backup would be needed for a city of a million people. Let's say 6hrs minimum.
And none of them are affordable and useable at scale except for hydro storage, and this one is very limited by the geography of the country.
Plants harves energy from sunlight in the light reactions, and store the energy in the dark reactions. The dark reactions use Carbon Dioxide to make sugar. Sugar is stored as starch and fat. Lots of fuels can be synthesized with electricity. Ammonia can be used as fertilizer and fuel for instance.
Imagine a smart thermal battery made from photoswitch molecules. When sunlight hits these molecules, they change shape and store energy. This energy remains locked in until a small trigger of heat, light, or electricity is applied, causing the molecules to revert to their original shape and release the stored energy as heat.
So this would work without solar panels, right?
The concept of a smart thermal battery using photoswitch molecules does not necessarily require traditional solar panels in the same way photovoltaic systems do. Here’s how it works:
Energy Storage Mechanism
Photoswitch molecules, such as norbornadiene (NBD) and azobenzene (AB) derivatives, absorb sunlight and undergo a photoisomerization process. This process converts the molecules into a metastable, high-energy state, effectively storing energy from the sunlight246.
Integration with Solar Cells
While solar panels are not required for the energy storage process itself, integrating these photoswitch molecules with solar cells can enhance the overall efficiency of solar energy harvesting. For example, researchers have added a layer of these photoswitching molecules to standard commercial silicon solar cells to reduce the heating effect caused by high-energy photons, thereby increasing the solar cell's efficiency2.
Standalone Operation
However, the photoswitch molecules can operate independently to store solar energy. When sunlight hits these molecules, they change shape and store energy, which can be released later upon application of a small trigger such as heat, light, or electricity456.
In summary, while integrating photoswitch molecules with solar panels can be beneficial, it is not a strict requirement for the operation of these molecular solar thermal energy storage systems.
@Thomas-gk42 A smart thermal battery using photoswitch molecules stores energy from sunlight without needing traditional solar panels. These molecules undergo photoisomerization when exposed to sunlight, changing shape and locking in energy. This energy remains stored until a trigger, such as heat, light, or electricity, causes the molecules to revert to their original shape and release the energy as heat.
While integrating these molecules with solar cells can enhance efficiency by reducing heating effects, it is not necessary. The photoswitch molecules can operate independently to capture and store solar energy. This system provides a novel approach to solar energy storage, leveraging molecular changes to store and release energy on demand.
@@aaronjennings8385 Thank you
@@aaronjennings8385it's Money Costs and revenue returns that will decide if it's viable.Even if the science is sound❤❤
I think this is the future to store energy at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. thanks a lot for this idea and its presentation.
Hope You don't mind constructive criticism, as I believe this could be also useful for the audience of this channel. I feel the need to correct Your statement regarding pumped storage, i.e., the sentence "building mountains next to lake doesn't scale very well" (0:54)😉. The statement is true, but also incorrect 🙃, because that's not how typically pumped storage is built. Usually, pumped storage is built in the places that already have suitable topographic conditions. Mountains surrounding the area are needed, which will be basis for an upper reservoir. You also need water, but it doesn't have to be a lake. However, You'll need difference of height between upper and lower reservoir fro such project to make sense. So finding proper location is a significant limitation. Nonetheless, 10 years ago it was still the energy storage with by far highest installed power, dwarfing other types of storage. I'm not up to date with situation nowadays. I've heard about a plenty of projects involving batteries, but I still think pumped storage could be the most abundant when it comes to installed power worldwide.
I guess the idea is form having to build it close to the solar power. To avoid having to transfer lots of power just for storage I guess
So well other than needing the location you said, you also need it to be close to a good location for solar panels
Unless you think building mountains scales well, her statement was correct. And it's precisely because "it doesn't scale well" that it's only done "in the places that already have suitable topographic conditions". That was kind of the point of the joke: you can only do it in specific places, because the alternative would be to build your own mountains, which isn't economically viable.
@@RFC3514 Good point. I definitely lack a sense of humor.
@@MaakaSakuranbo I wouldn't fully agree with Your statement to be honest. Both can be connected to the grid. Also scales would be different. In EU solar farms are rather small (very often order of magnitude of 1 MW installed power) and pumped storage can easily be >100 MW, even getting close to 1 GW.
@@niu9432 If connected to the grid, the grid potentially needs extra infrastructure to handle it.
This sounds interesting. Rock on!
Lovely video - annoying chemist here 🤓 at 2:10, when you say hydrogen, you pop up a picture of what appears to be water / H2O.
Actual question (no "/s"): if there were a way to install solar panels around the world such that at any time in the day the energy need would be satisfied by the solar panels on the bright side of the world and at least one country in each time zone shared its energy generation and consumption with at least one country for each other timezone, would we need batteries?
Would have to use radio waves to transmit around a satellite system. If you ever played sim city 2000, you might be familiar with the problems this can cause...
For one, transmission losses. For two, land use. For three, weather. For four, money.
Transmission losses are the killer for all the coolest megaprojects. You can get even more solar energy concentration in space, but by the time you get it to people on the ground, you've lost most of it and possibly masered several birds to death. I think my current favorite one weird trick to minimize the losses (and aviocide) are orbital rings, which would cost literally all the money in the world to build but could transmit solar power around the planet _kinda_ reliably... but you'd still have to worry about losses as heat or whatever.
Did you hear about the new project to collect solar energy in outer space it's suppose to be a fraction of thr cost of nuclear energy.
She did a video about it. Not practical.
Yes, I really like the idea but I'm afraid it's not very practical th-cam.com/video/QyPOPfFvJ8A/w-d-xo.html
The issue is most of the chemicals you showed would likely have significant toxicity based on their chemical structure. Its an interesting approach and we might be able to identify other compounds, but you are right that there is alot of loss converting from light, to electric, to chemical, to heat, to electricity. Compare that to solar which doesn't have that additional heat stage to convert back to electricity. I don't think that this stage it has much potential (pun not intended), but it is interesting and might lead to new ideas.
Pumping water up and letting it flow down still sounds like the best large scale power storage easily made and used.
Round trip efficiency is decent (on par with batteries), but the required infrastructure is massive and expensive... unless you already have the lake and dam. For countries with hydro installations, it makes a lot of sense to add pumps. to top up the reservoir. For other countries, not so much.
You have made your solution too specific. Look at it in a more general sense - you see the simplest solution as storing potential energy in a fluid.
The fluid doesn't have to be water, it could be air. If you store compressed air, you aren't limited by geography or climate.
@@DanBeech-ht7sw 400 bar tanks are not cheap and have energetic failure modes when incorrectly made or not properly maintained.. As is they can send fragmentation for hundreds of meters beyond the zone of total destruction.
@@DanBeech-ht7sw Compressed air has efficiency challenges compared to water. Compressed air has capital cost challenges compared to pump hydro, where pump storage is feasible. Given that compressed air storage is using technology that has been in active use for 100 years, I'm dubious that there will significant reduction in cost. I think RedOx flow batteries hold more promise for a cost break through .
Also low power density. One needs to fill up entire valleys to have a substantial contribution. Too bad if these valleys are populated.
I'm designing an off grid house right now, for Northern Idaho. It seems like to store the power for the worst couple of weeks of the year drives up the required amount of batteries by something like 5 fold. Since batteries don't last forever, this isn't feasible even with LiFePo batteries at $200/kWh. The lowest hanging fruit seems to be installing highly insulated storm shutters that can rolled in front of my sliding glass doors in sub zero F periods. The next is to accept that I might need to run a generator off of propane when it is cold and cloudy. After that, a couple of small wood stoves. Then, there is renting a trencher and putting in a ground loop to preheat the air going into the air exchange Mini Split. That isn't particularly expensive, but its like R&D rather installing a product, so it's probably not going to help me get a building permit. I won't be able to test it until I need it.
**number of batteries, not amount. "Amount of battery power" would have been grammatically correct, though!
@@jake12466 Battery power would be technically incorrect. The attribute would be battery storage capacity. And in provisioning you really don't care about the number of plastic boxes, since by getting bigger batteries you might have fewer batteries.
Building mountains with lakes next to them doesn't scale well. Great line.
About time Sabine. Chemistry is the world we live in. That is fields of gas and water bot a vacuum. Obviously chemistry is the answer.
As far as I know they’ve pretty much cracked sodium-ion battery’s. BYD is building their first commercial plant.
If that takes off as expected there really won’t be much need for all these exotic solutions.
Not like the West cares though. We refuse to buy superior chinese products. We will put tariffs and use expensive crap instead.
@@samgragas8467we've seen this sort of nonsense before, for example lead-acid vs Nickel-Iron batteries.
NiFe caught on in niche markets (industrial & submarines spring to mind) but in mass markets like the electric cars they were invented for stuck with the vastly inferior lead-acid & the car market collapsed as a result when petrol started catching on in the early 1900s 😢
**BATTERIES, NOT BATTERY'S 🤦♂️🤦♂️
I'm pretty sure god first said "Let there be light!", and then he said "shit, I can't see anything. Let's try again...
Let there be light... MOSTLY IN THE VISIBLE RANGE!"
Then he saw the light good.
there was a webcomic called The Holy Bibble - written by true prophets! -, and this could easily have been one of their jokes.
I love that expression "so keep dusting those solar panels" :)
But I'm afraid to ask :/ isn't it in the wrong context here?
I mean if we have good and cheap energy storage options dusting those solar panels would be even more important, wouldn't it? ;)
2:25 hypothetically is unproven/untested.
That's what the word means, yes.
That's why she used "theoretically" as it is proven and tested but has not been practically implemented.
U say that like it's all a lie to be ignored.
Solar has a theoretical limit that works on paper, but we've never gotten close to that in reality. Other hypotheses show less effectiveness compared to reality because other factors come into play which boost it. Until we actually try to implement it, we won't know whether we're short or overhyping it.
Very interesting, but for simplicity's sake, the reservoir method solves 2 problems in one community project; electricity generation and potential irrigation (Netflix on the Azores shows a very simple working model), and for flat plains communities, a multi-tiered subterranean well system where energy is used to pump water to homes on the surface, municipal drains collect and route water back to the upper-level water treatment reservoir, where it is released through some kind of turbine to lower-level storage tanks. Or, of course, the same could be done with a water tower and a turbine installed next door to top up residential Tesla Walls through a grid. A cone shaped turbine, similar to a jet turbine engine, could probably be suspended in a water-filled canister to reduce friction (if you could get a whirlpool effect started and maintained, you'd probably get some extra force acting on the turbine). The Airpod engine/drive mechanism, but using water?
Sabine are you impressed by Valadium redox flow batteries? Invented by Maria Skyllas-Kazacos in Australia in the 70's. Apparently, they can be taken to zero charge without damage, their charge doesn't degrade as much over time as other types of batteries, they can be refurbished after a decade's long life cycle, are not flammable or toxic. The largest one in China is 100MW/400MWH. I love your show / work / humor. Stay amazing.
one energy store i've seen that is interesting is solar panel-in-carbon blocks. solar panels can only absorb part of the spectrum, the rest goes to heat. That doesn't matter if the solar panel is embedded in a hot block of carbon, any infra-red that can't be captured just maintains heat.
Upside - much better heat->electricity conversion with no mechanical parts. Storing and generating heat is easy. you can optimise your panels for a known temperature surroundings.
Downside - your "solar" panels are hotter than normal, which limits your efficiency and material choice. Can't extract heat below a specific temperature, as the infra-red no longer emits at high enough frequency.
Photosynthetic plants have known about this and using this for millions of years. The energy from the sun source is formed into carbohydrates and stored inside them.
LFP are actually starting to get pretty affordable now and more practical than pump storage. Although I have seen studies on pump storage that indicated that it is actually very fiable on a large scale it is just more expensive than LFP. However, it is always good to keep on searching for better options.
Mechanical storage for termic energy is possible with expansion metal - red mercury insid small balls. This could highly simply store termic energy in nuclear reactors, as well termopara is quite efficient possibility to extract stord energy in energetic buffors with termic pomps peltier modules to powers up termopara
There are also Lead Carbon Batteries they dont degrade as much as + faster charging as standard lead acid batteries, cheaper and not an explosive risk like lithium ion, they are heavy but for long term storage doesnt matter. I believe even China is backing this as well.
Graphene batteries are making rounds in military applications (although they are still at an early development stage)
They are higher in energy density, lighter and more efficient. I think it's one of the most feasible steps forward in energy storage.
If the energy is leaving the molecules as heat, the Carnot cycle will limit how much of the heat can be turned to something else. Batteries are so great because they are not subject to the Carnot cycle (they are not heat engines)
We do NOT need to "build mountains with lakes." We would, however, have to beef up existing hydroelectric capacity 3 to 5 fold. The rest simply comes from pumping water upstream during peak solar times.
There was also the idea of gravity storage, which is basically pumping up a mountain in a lake.
Would using UV LED bulbs to trigger the storage material be more efficient? You could then store the energy in one specialized location and release it into the grid at the appropriate time.
Yep, thats super interesting! I guess if this kind of techology could be scaled up, could be made more efficient, it would basically all be in one unit, a solar panel with an underlying energy storage panel underneath? That would be quite neat because a company could then sell self-contained units that can release a steady output of energy throughout the day, even at night, without any further storage/ cable / installation requirements.
Ionic fluid iron-air batteries are really cheap and easy make. They aren't used because they a big heavy slow charging brutes but that is perfect for grid level storage.
Physics says that you need to build some "energy barriers" (that can be easily removed on demand) to store energy. And these barriers will degrade over time, no matter what it is in practice. So you need to spend more energy to build storage (build barriers+remove barriers) than you store energy. So the choice of the storage type depends mainly on the financial costs and participation in the economy of the country.
photochemical energy storage is intriguing, but the practical engineering is challenging. Ensuring photons connect with specialized molecules across a vast surface area without over- or under-saturating them would require a complex transport system to cycle saturated molecules out and fresh ones in. This involves substantial energy for circulation across large solar collectors, plus costly reticulation networks and pumps. Long-term stability and molecule replacement are also key. It’s an idea worth tracking once scaled beyond the lab bench, to validate if it can overcome these implementation hurdles.
Gravity storage through hydroelectric works very well. I think it has a pretty good efficiency percentage too. Technically anything better than 0% is better than not using storage
Hydro storage has the added benefit that, in case of flooding, you have the equipment to avoid disaster (even if you have blackouts for a while).
Interesting, but my favourite new way to store energy stays the underwater pump storage from the Fraunhofer Institute.
Basically a concrete ball that gets submerged 7-800m. This way, it has a decent height difference but needs less effort to be built. There were tests in Germany and in the beginning of the month they started first tests in California. Unless they find a way to fuck up the material selection, it looks perfect to me.
Hey Sabine... AWESOME...!!! 😁👍👍 -70SomethingGuy
Well, when the explanation started I thought it was about my idea for energy storage. It comes from those supersaturated sodium acetate heat pads. The idea is simple. Find a salt like sodium acetate but one that gets much hotter, in excess of 100 degrees C. Then use its exothermic reaction to boil water and use solar power to melt the crystals and prime the substance for another exothermic reaction. There are some issues remaining like moving around the solid crystalized form of the salt and insulating the whole thing, but those sound like solvable issues. As such the biggest issue is that I have no clue how to find out the theoretical efficiency of the system.
I heard about storing heat in a salt (baking powder). It seems to be cheap and still very energy dense. It has a few test locations running it, at least one in Holland and one in France. Sabine, i'd love to hear your opinion about it although I know you're not a big fan of heat storage.
Still a nett energy consumer. A percentage of what you're attempting to store is expressed as heat, dissipated & unusable, can be captured but decays rapidly. There's always been 3 simple rules with elec storage. 1. You will never win. 2. You cant break even. 3. You will always lose!
How do you feel about gravity batteries? Deep hole, heavy weight on a cable. Mechanical failure could be disastrous without a good failsafe, but i like it in concept.
There is also a method where excess energy is used to dry a out a salt solution to store thermal energy. To retrieve the energy again; just add water.
Energy could be stored with pressurised air. Efficiency might be lower, but even low efficiency is useful in some cases if cost is low. A lot of solar power is wasted.
We already have a system such that the Sun modifies molecules into a higher energy state. And with the application of a small amount of energy to start the reverse process those molecules will lose all that stored energy. It's called a tree and a fireplace.
4:00
Lithium Ion Batteries have an efficiency of higher than 99%. Otherwise they would degraded way quicker. Transforming Energy from alternating to direct current and Back might reduce efficiency slightly, but surely it is closer to 95 % rather than 80 %.
when i was younger i remember imagining a battery for a sci-fy concept similar to this. I just tought it sounded "real" enough. i explained it to claude and asked it to summarize.
"Imagine a battery made of a container filled with a special liquid. The liquid molecules have an uneven electromagnetic field (similar to how water molecules are polar). When you charge the battery, instead of storing energy through chemical reactions like normal batteries, the free electrons get "trapped" in the spaces between these molecules due to their uneven electromagnetic fields.
As more electrons get stored, they create pressure in the liquid, making it become more rigid (like a very thick fluid) while still not chemically bonding with the molecules. When discharged, the electrons would flow out, and the liquid would return to its normal state.
Think of it like tiny electromagnetic bottles (the spaces between molecules) that can temporarily hold electrons without permanently capturing them - more like a parking space than a chemical bond.
The key innovation here is storing electrical energy through spatial containment rather than chemical bonds, potentially allowing for faster charge/discharge cycles and longer battery life since there's no chemical degradation."
Claude...?
@@jake12466 Anthropic's LLM AI claude 3.5 Sonnet
Interesting concept.
Gravity towers need to be researched a lot more. Electric motor efficiency above 90% means storage losses would be kept at a minimum and gravity remains a constant. Similar to dams but can be constructed virtually anywhere.
Energy density. Concrete is about 3x more dense than water. So to replace a huge reservoir, you have to lift 1/3 as much concrete. That's too big and too expensive.
Maybe an extremely deep hole could help, but that's also expensive.