How the Ocean Could be the Future of Energy Storage
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- Опубликовано: 3 июн 2024
- How the ocean battery could be the future of energy storage. To get an EcoFlow Delta Max, Delta Pro or some of their great accessories, go to the EcoFlow website: us.ecoflow.com?aff=195 or to Amazon: amzn.to/3vSDqhZ Batteries are the key to our renewable energy future. For intermittent renewables like solar power and wind turbines to be useful, we need energy storage to make them work over long periods of time. Lithium ion batteries come to mind, but they’re still too expensive for long-term energy storage. Pumped hydro energy storage makes up the largest battery systems in the world, but they’re limited to geography. Over 96% of the earth’s water is contained in the oceans, so what if we could turn oceans or lakes themselves into a battery? There’s some compelling technologies here, but let’s see if we can come to a decision on this.
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Hmm.. why put it under water? It just makes it more expensive..
Couldn't u just make like a 100 feet in diameter cylinder, have a piston in that cylinder that weighs like 100-200 tons (or whatever pressure u need on the water) and then pump in water at the bottom of the cylinder to raise the piston. And then have a turbine on the outflow... I just know that having things on the bottom of the ocean is Hella expensive in installation and maintenance. Also corrosion of the materials..
I'm very curious why nobody is looking at nuclear waste as an energy storage mechanism. It's so heavy that I feel like the same principle behind pumped hydro would work for that - just raise and lower it. This would also help to alleviate our nuclear waste storage issues.
Wow, I commented these battery systems a few months ago, nice to see this video! I really like the simple idea and could work amazingly in combination with windmill farms at sea - because the energy can be stored on site and doesn't need to go on the grid in peak hours.
@@eruilluvitar
Water Is A Clean Fuel…
ONE very large problem with any sub-surface energy generating device in salt water is ANYTHING below the surface is immediately colonized and occupied by all manner of ocean life forms. Barnacles, clams, coral, algae, and whatever else will grow and build up on surfaces, inside and out, necessitating constant scraping and cleaning. This applies to fresh water too. Zebra mussels clog water intakes in the Great Lakes and some major rivers.
Copper sheeting? Or not practical?
I have watched a video about repopulate marine live it used 3Drinted segments and it increased the live
"at the depth of 700 meters", not much life there
@@jackslagle2019 in salt water?
🌬💨🌊🏭🌱
Civilization is a Holocaust
The Flood is Salvation
Alot of the problems with these energy storage solutions is that seawater is so corrosive that the "20-30 year life expectancy" may or may not be overblown because of degradation of materials, especially that water bladder solution. Flexible plastics don't stay flexible for 20 years even under optimal conditions.
I don't know how old you are. But plenty of car carburetor still works 40years later with the original rubber diaphragm inside them. Technologies did not stop evolving 20year ago, we're still developing new material you and I don't even know about.
marine concrete last long
@@TJPDmember
Are you proposing that sea water isn’t corrosive and the divides won’t require maintenance over “30-50 years?”
@@TJPDmember Carburetors aren't usually submerged in corrosive seawater for 20 years.
@@Kawitamamayi never said so. All I said is, we already have flexible material that last longer than what you said in gasoline without maintenance. So I can say without much risk, that we can do flexible material that will last as long (20years+) with proper maintenance. Easy or not, but doable. Will it be cost effective that is an other question.
I feel they have drastically underestimated the cost of maintaining systems like this.
*edit*: I “hypothesize” for the eloquent individuals who have a problem with the use of “feel” here.
and overestimated the durability of the materials at depth.
@@Babarudra Also overestimated the efficiency and how it will degrade in those conditions.
So, as always with such videos, most of those venture startups is a FRAUD, if we are honest.
Thinking outside the box they could tether the system so float it back to surface to service thinking of the comments on maintenance issue. Degrading of materials could be an issue with salt water for sure but this is cheaper than other generation mechanisms. Over all I like the concept.
@@StrangerHappened 100% agree! I mean we have to replace fiber optic and power lines that do not move because seawater is so harsh...
also with the flexible bladder I feel like the constant stretch contraction cycle with cold seawater will degrade the rubber
Awesome! These are some solid ideas. This is the first time I've heard of the under water vacuume/ water pressure option. Pretty cool stuff.
Hi Jerry!
Stfu...what is vacuume?
I had never heard of this until now
And wouldn't ya know I had very similar ideas a few years ago. The thought was...water exerts incredible force at depth, why is no one harnessing this? (I also clearly didn’t do enough searching or I would've found that ofc someone thought of it well beforehand). Inspired by sinking and squishing a rubber ducky in a local public pool, I did a few envelope calcs and realized it wouldn't work...but that's because I was thinking of it as an energy source...not storage!
The idea was to sink air filled containers using offshore wind turbine electricity. The containers had a "crush-ability" built-in at a specific depth, or would "crush on demand" by pulling a few support pins. And running that air through a turbine. But I quickly found out since it's just trading off potential energy, there's no net benefit, making it totally irrelevant, and a net energy sink.
But I never thought of it as a storage mechanism! 🙄 One of the pitfalls of working on a project alone. Two heads are better than one. The trading of potential energy works great for energy storage...just as pumped hydro storage already does.
I think this is a fantastic energy storage method, with massive potential. Congrats on the teams working on it. 👍👍👍
pretty cool
When I first heard of pumped water storage, I came up with an idea of pumping air from the surface into a deflated bladder in deep water. Excess power would be used to fill the bladder with air through a one-way valve and when power was needed a second valve would open and the crushing pressure of the ocean would cause all the air to rush back to the surface while spinning turbines.
Having seen Ocean Grazer, It's nice to see that I was on the right track despite missing the mark a bit. And this way the ocean wouldn't be full of tubes to facilitate air moving back and forth.
He didn't mention it but UWCAES (underwater compressed air) is a thing. The benefit vs everything in the video is that the pump/generator can be out of the water so maintenance should be easier.
A challenge with compressed air is the fact that energy is lost unless you manage the heat during compression and freezing during decompression. Efficiency may drop below 50%, and heat management that prevents this will increase the cost of the installation. But I think it is a great idea, worth pursuing.
This has got to be one of my favorite new options we can add to the future. I love things that take basic, naturally occurring things in nature and find unique way to utilize it simplistically. That idea with the long bladder bags and turbines i just think its great.
Interesting, and I love to hear about new ideas like this. However, I suspect that the combination of moving parts, salt water, tidal forces, and the accumulation of algae and other life will lead to a lot of expensive maintenance and failure potential.
Agreed. Especially with the rope/pulley prototype that's going to be the single largest concern for continuing operation.
I think the closed loop prototype is the most promising for that reason. With the exception of the flexible bladders, the system doesn't need to worry about seawater corroding its equipment and silt getting into the turbines.
I guess they should base the actual implementation on proven marine tech (I'm thinking big cargo ships, oil platforms and the like)
That is why for these ideas I would look at ones where what is underwater is the simplest and hopefully non-moving part. eg. Have the pump that pumps the water down, on the surface, and a sealed pipe to pump the water through to the tank on the floor bottom. I saw one where the pipe carried air, and the container on the floor bottom was like a upside down bowl with holes around the bottom. Air was used to push the sea water out, and then the sea water forced the air back out, which then spun the turbine, which was above the sea level. Problem with that of course is the energy lost to heat when compressing the air to push the sea water out, which is likely why they are looking at using water as the working fluid.
You have neglected to inform yourself there already is a massive marine economy based around oil drilling platforms that would have already solved these issues.
@@Manuda No, those issues are not at all solved. Oil drilling platforms are basically just a tower, not moving parts to handle energetic water flows. While there can be a bit of ballast tanks, that's nothing like dealing with moving parts being clogged up.
If Matt Ferrell makes a video of your article, you are blessed for life. If he makes a video on a second paper then you are guaranteed a place in heaven! Great graphics on BEST. Congrats! Looks neat.
The one drawback I can see, having lived near the ocean most of my life I feel those designing these projects have no idea what a harsh and unforgiving environment the seas can be to man made things. Any storage project has to be simple enough to be maintained by the average high school graduate to be economically feasible on the long term.. It also has to be accessible for repair. I have yet to see any of these projects have a Preventive maintenance schedule or repair in place schedule that makes sense. We sorely need something like this to make it to the "Age of energy" if we expect to survive as a species.
If they can do oil rigs, they can do this
This is one of the reasons why wave power didn’t succeed due to the huge destructive power at the sea surface. At depth this shouldn’t be as big a problem. Biofowling is another issue that could affect performance of the open loop systems mentioned here.
@@jbmurphy4 I do be hating biofouling
Yup. That why I assume on-site storage like this will only really be used for long term energy storage.
I’m assuming that the cost for all of these methods will increase drastically once they get to the real world application phase just due to maintenance costs.
Your final sentence is ridiculous. You can't back that up. We'll survive. It's simply not the end of the world, and there are tons of ways to make affordable energy.
I might suggest two ballasts with one floating and one submerged. The floating ballast could be used to extract energy from tides even as the submerged ballast stores energy. Just wind it up at low tide and then allow it to lower the submerged ballast at high tide. We also must consider that tension in anchors makes them far easier to dislodge and release the ballasts.
My thermodynamics professor at Penn State had us do project on this determining energy storage and effiencies if Lake Erie was used for a sub-surface energy storage. Whi knew I would see this again!
Thanks for bringing out this tech to the mainstream! these seem the most environmentally friendly.
These smaller shperes seem safer than the bigger one's show earlier in the video!
Awesome content! So many options of storing energy. I need to watch it several times over to fully understand. Thanks Matt!
Along the east coast of the U.S., the continental shelf is ~200m deep at most, so barely deep enough. You'd have to go out 100+ miles from shore to get any deeper. There will be future offshore wind farms that could make good use of an implementation optimized for 100m to 200m deep.
My kids and I LOVE your videos, ages 14, 12 & 8. The oldest, my son, is so worried about climate change that he occasionally can’t sleep. Last night was one of those nights, so we watched this video before they went to bed, it helped calm him down…thank you! 🙌
I had an idea similar to the STENsea one 2 years ago, when I was searching for a thesis for my Master degree. Explaining it to 2 university professors, none of them really thought it was a good idea and didn't support me in the work of studying them, so I decided for another project... As I live in Italy, a country surrounded by water, I think one of these SHOULD be a valid alternative solution to chemical storage and aleatory energy production by renewables!
Anyway, very good video! :)
I have actually done some maths on the compressed air options.
Compressed air can store a LOT of energy as a material in a small volume. The only issue is that it isn't all that scalable for cheap because of buoyancy.
I'd calculated that with 33 cubic metres of air, (100m) you can store enough energy to run a house for a day. (UK) (energy level Doubles at 200m) that's just slightly smaller than a shipping container.
The only issue was that for each cubic metre of air, you're going to need approximately ONE TONNE of anchorage. This force level doesn't increase with depth, but it's a LOT of force regardless. Do enough for a town in one location and you're at serious risk of pulling up the whole seabed. Alternatively, vastly increase the cost by weighing it down with concrete.
Underground cave compressed air may however be a better option. No buoyancy issues. At reasonable depth it could be scaled enormously. Underground cave compressed storage is currently used for a few nuclear powerstations. Pushing the limits of that (whacking up the pressure underground to perhaps 100 bar) might also be extremely economically viable.
At 100 bar, you would only need 3.3 cubic metres of a well designed tunnel-air-storage to power a house for a day, which could be very cost efficient.
fascinating stuff! thank you for thus precious maths
isn't compressed air efficiency like 20%?
@Mark Stewger You don't get it, do you?
Compressed air storage should also be an option and I think China is investing heavily into it. Not great everywhere and on the lower end of efficiency but relatively cheap upfront costs with minimal environmental impact should definitely be an option.
7:18 Water in a vacuum has a lower boiling point and can flash evaporate into high volume steam when the vessel is almost empty releasing minerals from the water causing scaling or mineral buildup while losing your vacuum, also degassing of water may make a vacuum hard to form. Using pure water in a closed loop has its own challenges. But looks fascinating.
The ocean already is a massive heatsink and OTEC oceanic thermal energy conversion is a way of harnessing that solar energy.
Yes, I feel it has problems too. If the gas is in near vacuum to start with, how would it push the water back out all the way to generate electricity?
@@rogerstarkey5390 I got that, but either way, wouldn't the system just get to am equilibrium? At which stage, only about half the capacity can be stored? Does that make sense?
@@rogerstarkey5390 "Using pure water in a closed loop" was referring to a possible solution to fowling from minerals by using clean water in a closed loop. Small part of my comment.
@@rogerstarkey5390 The bladder solution is a closed loop where the pumped out fresh water is stored temporarily in the bladder.
Thanks Matt, your blogs are presented in a really good way, seems you cover almost all the points of interest on any subject...
Matt I absolutely love your show. It really helps keep me +positive+ 🥁 for the future. Keep up the great work!
I love it. I thought of using the tides for energy generation years ago. A simple floating platform with lines to generators that loop back up to the platform through pulleys connected to weights would supply energy during flood and ebb tides halting during slack tide. Storing the power in the same location would be the perfect complement.
Tide power has been thought of and tried many times, the issue is it’s extremely hard to harness the energy in a way that’s easy converted into electricity
@@rogerstarkey5390 yes but the movement is minuscule, we’re talking on the orders of meters over the course of a full day, the amount of energy that would create in a turbine is nothing . You’d have mechanically increase the gain with gears ratios or something similar, and have a lot of these systems to generate any meaningful power. Then there’s the issue of mounting, for a force to be applied to a theoretical turbine these systems can’t just be floating in the water they have to be fixed, which in the ocean introduces more headaches. Like I said this isn’t a revolutionary idea people have been trying to come up with ways to harness tidal energy for decades and it’s by no means trivial. After you’ve jumped through all of the hoops required and seen the output power available for the input effort required you’ll just be left asking yourself why you didn’t just use offshore wind turbines
Tidal power has been in use for decades, l think one of the first commercial units was in france,built in the 70's from memory and still running.
The issue is tidal ranges vary a huge amount between areas so some areas are far more suitable than others, the other problem is that it requires a lot of space which is often not available near coastlines or if it is available it's nowhere near where the power would be needed and the long distance power transmission lines would have to be built to connect it. End result is always one of high costs for the given output.
There are newer methods of tidal power currently in development, including currently supplying the grid, but they all face varying issues which in turn always boil down to cost in comparison to things like wind and solar.
Matt, I find your videos really interesting in the way they open up my mind (and this case, towards the possibilities of energy sources and storage)!
Thank you for making them the way you do! 🙂
Love the optimism that this and the UK site 'Just Have A Think' gives. Old fashioned thinkers (AKA Nay Sayers) often say 'that will never work' but I answer with them thinking back 120 years when people would discount 'the horseless carriage' as wishful thinking "you can't go past a good horse and cart".
I was actually pondering the system design described at 10:15
Looks like I am loads of money and a couple years late again.
By the way the other advantage of the sealed system is that the moving parts won't have to be exposed to a corrosive fluid. The fluid doesn't even necessarily need to be water.
Pumped Sea Water Storage sounds like an incredible idea. There could be fields of those on the ocean floor. The issue with sea water corrosion is a relatively easy problem to deal with. Lithium Batteries don’t seem to be the answer with the rare metals needed to construct them.
I mean, if at the same time as they pump the ocean and the use a permeable membrane to desalinate a portion of it, they could collect plenty of rare earth minerals also in the process, well... more like a expensive sludgy brine that will need further processing. But it's feasible. Dubai is building a desal plant and plan on doing the same thing for their new mega city.
Apart from cobalt which is already being phased out of many new lithium batteries, there really isn't a supply issue in terms of available resources, just an issue with the amount of mine production currently online and output capacity of current refineries.
Australia is already by far and away the worlds largest lithium producer and could easily increase output many times over from hard rock deposits, which have a far lower environmental impact than the brine deposits in areas like south America.
In time production will increase dramatically, it's just an issue of mines take a long time to get through the approval processes and then be built, along with the required infrastructure like train lines to export the ore concentrates which is generally processed in china.
A lot of things that people think are in short supply or difficult really aren't, a lot of the time the biggest issue is simply paperwork and bureaucracy.
Funnily enough one of lithiums biggest supply issues is due to Australia's stringent environmental laws which require so many reviews and delays due to protestors who are against all mining yet demand subsidies to increase adoption of electric vehicles...
@@Jake12220 Construction of batteries is still an environmentally unfriendly process. Not that we shouldn't use them to make electric cars but we should eliminate their use when possible
@@Jake12220 I live in QLD Australia btw. FIFO worker. 😂😂 In those literal mines.
Very interesting video, as always. These systems look very promising on the surface (so to speak) and while I wholeheartedly support the exploration and innovation, one thing the press releases from the developers seem to consistently underplay (similar to giant ocean plastic scoop pitches) are the manifold technical challenges of putting corrosive metals, moving parts, and electricity into a warm electrolyte bath prone to getting rather feisty with every passing frontal system. As an oceanographer and circumnavigator, I have cobbled together and maintained diverse power and electronic systems carried on large ships and on small sailboats at sea -- systems that sometimes had experimental results, research dollars, and careers depending on them succeeding, but other times the lives of my family and crew. So, when I hear projections claiming some of these systems will be inexpensive to install and last with low maintenance for 20 years, I am skeptical. Not as skeptical as when they throw "floating offshore solar arrays" into the mix... but skeptical. The other thing missing in this excellent video -- if you'll allow me the criticism -- is the environmental impact. The damage to not only the benthic ecosystems, overlying habitat, and fisheries we depend on would not be negligible for any of these systems. That might not necessarily be a show stopper, but it absolutely needs to be reckoned into the balance sheet alongside the costs per MWh to install and produce electricity, etc.
It occurs to me ... they take battleships that are old and worn out and sink them off the coast to spark the growth of a coral reef ... what's going to happen when the coral reef decides to grow on, in and around the ocean battery?
@@uncaboat2399 isn't that where regular maintenance comes into play?
@@TCt83067695 Certainly, but can you affirm that they fully took the cost of that into account? These sorts of "pie in the sky" schemes often gloss over or completely ignore the real costs of maintenance, among other downsides.
@@uncaboat2399 I can't prove the negative technically...
@@TCt83067695 Very true. This is where you need to take History into account. As in the actual rarity that these sort of things aren't packed to the gills with graft, corruption, deliberate short-cuts, no-bid deals going to unqualified relatives and cohorts, etc.
I'm sure in an ideal world it is a perfectly conceivable idea. I should like to live in such a place one day. We certainly don't live there now.
As with many things in the ocean the largest and most often overlooked cost is critters. Critters always either clog or grow on your stuff.
Matt, I live on Vancouver Island on the wild and wicked west coast of Canada. On the East side of the Island there are huge currents created every time the tide goes in and out. The natural shape of the channels between the mainland and the island funnel millions of gallons of seawater twice each. It's a renewable resource that has great potential, yet its over looked. Some renewable power sources are just not considered
Perhaps you’ve covered this elsewhere, but... I’ve read that one solution to storage is substantially overbuilding cheap renewables. For wind, that means idling many turbines on an optimal wind-power day, and ramping them back up when wind is suboptimal (obviously, need other sources when there’s no wind). I think overbuilding is a good idea from another perspective as well: managing demand via pricing. For example, when wind &/or solar output are maximal, electricity prices should be cheapest, and that’s the time to charge e-cars & e-bikes. Right now, ev charging is often done at night, because daytime demand is high for other uses. But if clean renewables were overbuilt, perhaps this would change timing. (Anyway, smart systems would pick cheap times to recharge, regardless of time of day). Hot water is another example: heat it when clean energy output is maximal (& cheapest) and store for use as needed.
this sounds very sensible, I can imagine being able to program power points/devices to help balance out the grid and save on electricity bills
One difficulty with overbuilding is that it does best when combined with lots of transmission, to even out geographic differences in output, but in democratic countries people oppose transmission construction through their area. See for example the recent fiasco in Maine.
Australia already does this. We have enough solar that on a good day it provides up to 50% of our use at a given point and the grid providers are experimenting with on demand use for things like hot water tanks. The problem is that without storage they need to continue to run coal fired powerplants at a minimum level which means that excess solar and wind is scuttled i.e. inverters are turned off, solar panels are turned away from the sun, wind turbines are halted. The only solution to storage is storage. I don't think lithium is the best option but for now at least it's the only one we have
Overbuilding drives down the return on the turbine. If you're only getting paid for electricity half the time you could be generating it, the pay-back time on the generator doubles. Or alternatively the cost of electricity by this method doubles, which is why it becomes cheaper to store the energy when there is excess capacity. Neither solution is correct in isolation, we need a some over capacity and some storage.
Luckily Australia has a very large pumped hydro capacity that utterly dwarfs the battery Musk built in South Australia. Its also currently greatly increasing the pumped hydro capacity to help store the excess supply in favorable conditions, but sadly most of the pumped hydro is in the south east of the country, with most of the country not being able to make good use of it. Hopefully a lot of the other dams will be converted to pumped hydro systems, but its really not possible in a lot of areas and so many people are against dams either on environmental grounds or because it will flood their property.
Very hard to beat pumped hydro. Anything else requires so much more building to achieve the same scale
Pumped hydro can't scale up big enough in areas where it's not geologically/geographically convenient, unfortunately.
@@daniellewis1789 Where exactly are you worried about? The research has been done, there’s options everywhere.
“There are a total of about 530,000 potentially feasible pumped hydro energy storage sites worldwide, with a total storage potential of about 22 million GWh. These astonishing numbers come from a report recently released by Professor Andrew Blakers and other researchers with Australian National University’s RE100 Group.”
When you use BEST, you can actually produce energy when you time the Load and unloading phase in respect to the tides...
One option for building deep water reservoirs (such as the spheres) that I'm curious about would be to use the seacrete/biorock process to literally grow the containers out of the seawater using electrolysis. You could use a portion of the excess power generated to grow thicker shells, which in turn increases to weight of the storage vessels.
With regards to the depth requirements, if we can sort out decent storage that can also act as anchors, it might end up being a benefit. It could free up operations to push further offshore. There would definitely need to be work in adapting wind/solar collectors for those conditions, but its a lot of real-estate that comparatively isn't in super high demand. Getting energy to shore however would need a transport medium that's more efficient than undersea cables at those distances.
What if the BEST system lowered a heavy weight instead of pushing air underwater? The mechanisms could be almost fully above water reducing the corrosion, and nothing but an anchor or two would have to be on the seafloor. When there is excess power you lift the weights up, when you need energy you lower them down.
Put it above ground, and you're taking up real estate and subjecting it to wind erosion and swings. The ideas behind putting these in the ocean and using high that high pressure environment is to put it close to offshore power generation sources and limit real estate usage.
That is an option, but you would need massive ships, which add to the cost. Also during a storm the ship will go up and down, which would affect generation or storage mode.
I am a novice so bear with me, but wouldn't the fact that the mechanisms are above water but at sea level and there constantly in contact with both seawater (H2O and Salt and other compounds) and Air (O2 and other compounds) mean that corrosion, especially rust or tarnishing, would occur at a faster rate? As I said before I am a novice and I am just curious
Weight storage has poor efficiency because of physics. You will rely on v=2gh for maxium energy of which you will extract around 60% at best.
It has very little capacity per weight of material used making it one of the worst way of storing energy.
You can see this in people theorizing storage with concrete weight on cranes... it is inefficient, costly and pollutes a lot (concrete=co2 footprint).
And herre you just add a dire environement saline corrosion+ocean= hurricanes and other shenanigans.
@@EliteRocketBear salt water tides and currents don't cause corrosion?
The cost of lithium ion batteries have steadily declined, if that decline continues, then they could drop below most of these alternatives, and potentially before these alternatives become ready to scale out. CATL also announced a sodium battery which looks very competitive. It's cheaper than lithium ion, sodium is much more widely available and cheaper than lithium, and it's a safer technology overall. It seems like these alternatives may have a hard time competing with sodium batteries.
I agree. I think investment flow would not like to go to this kind of expensive infrastructure that require considerable upfront investments when there's a real risk of new battery technology development, that can be cheaper, faster and more flexible to implement. In my view long term infrastructure would struggle to find enough finance sources.
These particular structures do not require the mining of minerals of any kind whether lithium or sodium.. Tremendous amounts of money has to go in to mining operations to run a successful profitable mine. There is also the environmental degradation that doesn't have to happen with these kinds of structures.
@@johnnycarson67 The wonderful thing about sodium is that you don't have to mine it. It's in the sea salt. Sodium Chloride.
I’m in the marine trades and have to deal with corrosion, bio-fouling, and other issues all the time. Yet, I still see potential. Logs can be preserved for decades under water, brackish water sinks, water and oil don’t like to mix, Roman Concrete made thousands of years ago still stand today, fluids were once used to mill hard rock, CO2 is a cheap inert gas. These variables listed and some I may have overlooked have a great room for clarification. And, the risk worth seeking reward.
This channel sparks joy!
The problem with all these is I wonder if they take into account the sea life that will try to colonize these structures and gum up the works which would greatly increase maintenance costs
I understand the concern. But how much life is there at 700 meter depth?
I dont think much is alive at 700 meters of depth
☺️here for the positive vibe. Enormous thanks for your content to counter that Geopolitical mess that goes on.
You are doing a great job🤙
Love the channel. Absolutely one of my favorites!
These systems are so dependant on a controlled environment. Just, how do you defeat something like 'barnacle' build up or alge? The cost benefit/life expectancy needs to encompass regular maintenance...let alone break down of the materials due to constant exposure to salt water...
and the inaccessibility of components at 750 meter depths.
Doing a direct comparison to cost of storing with LI batteries isn’t always the best choice since most of these will be used for long term storage while the LI batteries will only be used for 24 hour storage.
I’m predicting that we’ll see a small amount of these installed at every off shore wind farm for that very reason.
The recap at the end is great. Great formula.. keep it up :)
Great videos Matt! Also, love your intro music.
Interesting ideas; explained brilliantly as usual. Could the BEST system be used like the kite generators using the underwater currents to generate power as well as store it?
I'm thinking this concept could also be done in freshwater lakes. It would of course have to be more than a few feet deep but still, it is very sound
Hi miless. Great idea. It can work similarly to a vertical axis tidal plant.
Hi Matt, I have been recently wondering about salt water batteries to store renewable energy, they are very cheap, practically non polluting, widely available, non toxic, non flammable and much safer. The downsides seem to be low energy density (about 4 or 5 times less than lithium ion batteries) and development that is lacking for industrial scale. Do you think you can make a video about this? Because I'm pretty interested about this.
Decades ago, ships used some kind of grid of dissimilar metals lowered into the sea to generate a small bit of electricity for emergency radio transmitters, but it is very little and has almost no amperage.
@@MikinessAnalog Yeah decades ago, but development has changed, salt water batteries can now store much more energy than just a few kWh.
@Cancer McAids You would never have very much potential difference (voltage), but with a grid of a few kilometers, you could theoretically have a lot of amperage.
Like all things related to energy production, its not a matter of if something is possible, its a matter of if its cost competitive with its competition. Currently wind and solar are so inexpensive in relative terms that inefficient project wouldn't even get a look in.
The other issue in this particular case is that the metals uses in this process need to be replaced quite often and also require regular cleaning. There is a reason they only used it as an emergency backup instead of running it all the time.
@@MikinessAnalog I think there is a misunderstanding in what I meant with salt water batteries. I am not talking about something that makes energy out of sea water, I am talking about a BATTERY, the thing you use to STORE energy, more specifically renewable energy, not PRODUCE energy.
Nice work Matt - underwater storage seems like a really realistic option - It is such simple technology which will use existing materials - I’m guessing this will be a decent part of the energy storage solution.
Wow these are compelling ideas of ways to store energy in bodies of water! Thanks for sharing Matt 🤯
I feel like we have so many good technologies for energy storage, but we haven't seen anything to replace lithium batteries for for which we don't have enough minerals, which are used in applications like EV's and various other machinery where batteries are the best alternative to gas/deisel. That is one of the biggest challenges for getting to an entirely carbon free energy system.
good technology concept, lithium batteries is already on the market and mass produced... the difference between a concept and mass produced tech is huge...
Lithium Ion is not optimized for grid storage, other storage manners are better. But it is cheaper because of mass production
@@alphaxfang I agree that they have been an amazing thing for the development of technology, but if we want to convert everything to electric, we either need to get a lot better at recycling batteries, or have new battery technology that can use much more common minerals
Agreed. We will need to burn A LOT of fossil fuels to build/mine/transport/etc. our way to a carbon free energy system. Implementation of an entirely new system requires a lot of energy from the current system of energy.
So, we should start by obtaining those fossils fuels from the countries that produce them in the cleanest possible way. We need to stop using fossil fuels from countries that produce them cheap and dirty.
If we can’t get on board with that, then the rest of it, is only a pipe dream.
@@crt5866 what ever happened with the earth- battery guy from MIT using liquid salt and other large cheap materials?
What about energy storage in a giant clock spring? Wind turbines wind them up and use the power when it's not windy
Friction would probably be a problem here, but interesting idea
I've for some reason done maths on this. Turns out steel as a material doesn't store barely the energy, and would be prohibitively expensive at scale.
Rubber was far more economically viable because it can store much more energy.
But it was still nothing compared to the material properties of compressed air. However compressing air is the issue.
The issue with the underwater compressed air storage is that you need 33 cubic metres (a bit smaller than a shipping container) to power a house for a day
And for 33 tonnes of buouancy per house for a 100k-house city in one area, you rapidly get to the point where the seabed can't be expected to hold.
Alternatively you weigh it down with 33 tonnes of concrete, but that's, frankly, rather expensive.
Apologies for the ramble
The idea does not seem to be practical. Even fly wheels would have better performance.
I thought of using a dome pressurised by the sea water when I was 12 years old now 64 ,good to see people waking up to the idea.
The most fascinating thing about this in my opinion is that many big cities are close to the ocean and sometimes land for infrastructure its pretty hard to come bye.
There are so many problems with centralizing things and yet no one seems to ponder making things more practical for individual home owners...
It is a symptom of an underlying problem that the world around you was not designed for you, it was designed to hold and contain your effort, energy, Productivity and focus it to plutocrats....
centralisation brings economy of scale, we need more of both centralised and decentralised energy storage.
I don't think decentralizing helps. It is about scale economy. Making 100,000 small home use batteries will probably cost much more and have a much bigger environmental impact than making one huge battery.
Not to mention maintenance, replacement and risk of failure, of letting everyone have a big energy storage at home.
My impression is different. I see a lot discussion about home batteries, and only little discussion of grid storage.
@@alexjohnward From the place I come from, which is difficult to describe to you....
..storage was never necessary because the wheelwork of nature provides as you need...
Please look up Earth ships and you tell me if maybe their homes were designed for them as opposed to your homes designed for you...
Just know who you're supporting before you lean that way...
They might be cutting your other leg off so you have to lean...
And you don't want to "lean" on a house-"hold" or anything because that is something difficult to get out from under once you don't have a leg to stand on... Please take your answer of a gift and Hop along now....
But perhaps you don't believe you are in westworld, so I will ask you to look up the definition of share cropping and you tell me what the difference between that and a mortgage is....
I care.
@@smug3636 You poor lost children of God, being so misguided thinking you can get something for nothing or have an ease of convenience that will allow you to sit ...which is not what you should be wanting to do in this limited time of only 30000 days, if you are lucky here on west world...
Please enjoy your stay if you are a guess but if you are a host you will never leave... Unless you realize you don't have to be meat in the grinder...
I'm sure they will spin a tail of infinite growth on the finite planet.. and wormed Derivative algorithms into your head convincing you of all kind of fair magic that is not true...
Is anybody promising a prophet is going to be a false one...
And it may cost you your soul "buy"being an extra in YOUR movie you were supposed to be starring in...
I will tell you anything you want to know about the world around you without want for money.
Ecoflow is leading the trend of the times! energy storage market has a great potential
Matt, Thanks for making these vids. Maybe make a compilation vid on the most promising green energy and storage solutions for the near-future and why.
Another superb video! This is one channel I watch religiously.
One small request. Please use kPa (kilopascals) instead of bar, which is obsolete. Thanks!
So many great and new ideas for energy storage!!!
Great video Matt. Lots of new tech to follow and hopefully in the next few years come to fruition.
Hope so! Thanks 👍
As stated elsewhere in the comments, the harsh environment of the ocean is a very big factor which I did not see covered here. I understand the creative people who come up with these ideas and prove their function also need to work hand in hand with experts in maintenance and maintaining at sea systems like the ones in this video. I have experienced how the less glamours field of maintaining systems at sea is constantly overlooked. But as long as that is honestly factored in, it all sounds great and could create jobs in that field especially for those of us who enjoy working in that field.
Now this is KISS in all it's greatness. Brilliant, Simple, Easy, and Efficient. In regards to the limitations do to depth, I would think this could be over come by simply having more surface area available for the ocean to push on. Yes it would cost more, but probably not woefully so, for example the rubber bladders wouldn't be too expensive to scale up, this in addition to changing their shape and allow lower pressure to be applied over a much larger area should give you similar potential as the deeper water systems. Hell it could even end up being cheaper because you wouldn't have to use materials that would have to withstand 75 psi etc.
Agreed. I felt the same way when I was first taught about pumped hydro. Such elegantly simple and effective solutions!
Matt, makes me wonder if every small town water tower couldn't double as a battery? Pump water up from a reservoir using the existing infrastructure and let it flow back through an appropriate turbine almost all the infrastructure already exists.
I think that those Dutch innovations will indeed hit the market around 2025.
We need those energy storages yesterday, coarse Netherlands is for the largest part about 5 meters below the sea.
That is why we builld dams, and invent stuf like this 😁
Woow! Just too many awesome ideas.
Congrats and Thx for explaining them all.
Glad you like them!
Another great video, seems to me like an amazing group of plans. For really cheap, and environmentally friendly power I don't think it's gonna get much better!!!!!!!
Agreed. These look really cool. I love that they’re working to find something that can be right their with the windfarm. I imagine that might make maintenance easier since the same person maintaining the turbines might be maintaining the batteries.
Very nice Thanks for your knowledge sharing
It's amazing for deep sea applications. Ocean batteries could support deep sea colonization if used alongside high depth membrane design for water dessalinization! Thank you for sharing and make us dream with a better future
There's another system developed in Italy. It's a closed system that liquifies co2 gas to absorb energy and spins a turbine with the expanding gas to release energy. It can be scaled easily, and it does't loose it's energy. co2 is the only abundantly available gas that doesn't need cryogenic temperatures to be liquified. At normal temperature, co2 only needs pressure (pumps) to be liquified. Round trip efficiency also 70-80%.
Excellent interesting and relevant video. At first I thought you might be presenting some the many failed wave-power projects. However these are new ideas, for energy storage, at development stage. Just as some wave power projects showed promise at development stage, only to fail in the harsh environment of sea, the jury is out on these new ideas.
Thank you Matt. 😊
Underwater energy storage using pressure is a great idea. Especially the relatively passive ones that are basically concrete spheres or tubes.
These are all pretty impressive.
This episode was great. So many possibilities and options, and most of them based on quite simple ideas.
Seeing as we're trying to pivot to renewables + storage to prevent inconsistencies, I'm curious about the amount of renewable systems we would need in order to produce all the energy needed for instant use + storage.
I don’t know about for wind, but the bar for solar is quite low. Basically, if every rooftop has solar on it then we’ll produce the amount that we use in a year.
The logistics of transmission isn’t too bad since a lot of the energy will be produced right where it’s needed. The logistics of storage is really the biggest hurdle. Hence why you’re seeing a new article about some R&D battery tech every day
I'm glad people are working on storage.
Really nice research. So interesting video.
Thank you!
great video. all very interesting. love that i discovered your channel. great content all around :)
Awesome, thank you!
The ocean, and specifically underwater has benefits for many business applications, this is just one of them and a vastly growing one.
The first floater idea seems to be quite vulnerable to tides and storms, exerting significant sideways force on the floater, likely throwing it off from a perfectly aligned position (directly above the mechanism). The cable and the connection with the crank/spool mechanism would likely see extreme stress and wear-and-tear.
Yeah, any time a storm is inbound they'd have to reserve power to haul it down deep enough to minimize impact. Just another thing to do before a major storm.
One of the main problems with everything off-shore is not only high maintenance cost but that accessibility is wether dependent strongly influencing down-time. This adds much higher risk to an investment calculation compared to onshore solutions.
I suspect that this is one of the reasons why deep water wind turbines aren't really a thing yet (such ideas where already floating around 10 years ago).
I've owned boats for at least 30 years, the maintenance for these boats is astronomical. I cannot imagine the costs for these water fairing batteries.
Prototypes are awesome 👌
thank you for the video
Litium-Sulpher video please! Apparently an Accidental breakthrough. Very much in line with your videos. Hope this helps. Love your videos
Great video! Thank you! )))
oh this gets me so excited! thanks for sharing
You are so welcome!
Excellent video as always!
Thank you!
Yes I am a kid playing Roblox...
Well-written, in-depth, interesting - thank you for the great video, good sir! :)
Glad you enjoyed it!
Amazing! No heavy metals! No pollution of the environment or the lanscape! High efficiency! The industry of batteries will fight against these good ideas and projects.
A neat idea, another way if implementing this kind of system would be to drill into the sea floor, line it with a stainless steel pressure vessel and cap it with a sturdy concrete pressure cap which would house the water pump. It would use less concrete and use the sea bed to reinforce the pressure vessel and the overlying sediments to keep sea life at a distance. A maintenance tunnel with a hatch will need to be installed for servicing but it will keep costs down and be simple in operation improving reliability.
This reminds me of something I saw a while ago, basically an upside down version on land, where it lifted heavy things to make a tower while 'charging' then lowered the same things slowly while 'discharging' was that a video on this channel? I can't remember but seems like something Matt would have covered and I'm like 70% sure it was a RUclips video I saw it in.
Great video. Thanks.
You are welcome! Thank you :)
My dissertation is on underwater hydropower vs underwater CAES, I’m currently evaluating turbines used for energy recovery on discharge by turbine velocity triangle analysis.
Great work! Hopefully VC's will see this and empty their pockets into ocean grid storage.
We lived down river from hydro power plant. My husband worried that it might break. So an under water system would be a good idea.
Problems among these systems:
• crush depth!
• seawater is corrosive
• generating electricity under water? Are you serious??
• deep lakes can be full of trees and other large debris
• divers and subs needed for maintenance are expensive.
Wow, this is so interesting. I am so glad to be reading “news” that holds hope for humanity.
Wow, the underwater concrete ball idea could be used in New Zealand. There is a 1km deep shelf around most of New Zealand. In fact Bay of Plenty would be a perfect place for solar array with these balls anchored to the 1km deep sea bed, as the whole bay is a 1km deep shelf in the ocean.
Exciting pilot projects!
It can help lessen the erosion around the cliff areas
חולה על הבן אדם הזה!
The best RUclips channel on technology. Full stop.