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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.
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. 👍👍👍
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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 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?
@@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.
@@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.
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.
@@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.”
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Another superb video! This is one channel I watch religiously. One small request. Please use kPa (kilopascals) instead of bar, which is obsolete. Thanks!
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
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.
@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.
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 😁
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.
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Even at a higher cost, it doesn't use battery material resources. Good to see all these different energy ideas being tested. I'm sure we will end up with two dozen methods that each work best in different locations.
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.
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.
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
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.
If in the open sea, some fish may use it as a shelter along with driftwood and seaweed sticking to these "floating batteries" But with the water heating up using it as a heat sink may aid in general ocean heating
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet ah But I wish you the same thing could be said for terrestrial ecosystem. Wind farms on the land cause multiple, multiple deaths of birds not to mention making it easier for some huckster behind endangered and mice, which in turn causes a trophic cascade
I like the idea of a large floating structure and the use of renewable energy to drag in under water... I was just wondering if we could not increase the gains by doing this: Build a structure that can also add compressed air in the ballasts. (making them naturally heavier so easier to sink or even potentially let gravity do the job) Once they are at the bottom release the compressed air into series of air turbines that would generate electricity (in a vertical pipe system, this way on the way up the air would expand and pressure could be constant, allowing for multiple air turbines to work on the way up) AND increase the buoyancy of the ballasts Gather the energy when the structure is going up again... The potential could be: 1. Energy gathered when the ballasts are going down (If they can sink fast enough once filled with liquid air why not also gather the energy on the way down) 2. Energy gathered when releasing the compressed air (while going up air would expand, release more energy on the way up) 3. Energy gathered when going up again I guess the question is: will it sink? Worst case scenario, have some ballasts filled with sea water too (when at the surface), it will increase the total weight of the whole platform and you can release the compressed air once at the bottom in 2 stages: first into the sea water filled ballasts to remove the water and increase buoyancy, then from those ballasts in a second step on the way up and therefore with higher pressure since going up the air now in those ballasts would expand. If such structure is too complex to make, just fill the ballast with compressed air, drop it down, transfer the liquid air to a fix tank at the bottom that will work as an independent air generator with a fixed vertical air turbine to release the air back in the atmosphere at the surface but from the tank at the bottom.
I´m always watching your videos looking for new ideas. We have a lot of cuses of renewable energies here in Brazil and such a big potential to develop, but we are facing dark days to our research and development.
At 10:30, concerning the Ocean Grazer system where it pumps the evacuated water into flexible bladders. I presume this is so they don't have to worry about filtering or otherwise processing sea water as it enters and leaves the main chamber, as in the other examples?
There is something very misleading over that stated cost of $131-$232 per MWh as it's about 1,000 times lower than the capital cost of Li-Ion battery packs in 2021 (which is about $131 per KWh). Having looked at the Lazard Levalized Cost of Storage report, then what I believe is being quoted is the cost of storing one MWh per day at wholesale rates, which is a very different thing to the capital cost of something to hold MWh for the lifetime of the device (which Lazard assume to be 20 years). It appears to me that the costs are to store a MWh of energy on a 24 hour basis aimed at overnight storage. I should add that if it costs just $131 per MWh of capacity for an installation with a 20 year lifetime, there would not be a cost problem with Li-Ion storage. The US consumes about 11 TWh of electricity per day. Thus at $131 per MWh, one day's consumption would be 11,000,000 x $131 = $1.4bn, or just $700m per year. That is a ridiculously low figure to have sufficient capacity to store one day's US power consumption. Of course what the real figure would be (using Lazards 350 day a year calculations, or 7,000 days plant lifetime) would be 11,000,000 x 7,000 x $131 = $10,000bn, or $500bn a year, a very different matter indeed. Other reports of capital costs for these Li-Ion battery farms support this. I should add that Lazard does not get any prizes for the clarity of their report when they refer to the costs per MWh. However, there are some clues as one of their table calculations refers to a plant with an 400 MWh nameplate capacity, and they work out that it will deliver 2,520,000 MWh during the 20 year project life, which would work out at 6,300 full charge-discharge cycles and they assume 350 days a year for 20 years, or 7,000 days in total, and it seems they've built a 90% efficiency into this model.
I really like the idea of putting the storage at the bottom of the windmill - then the same electricity infrastructure can be used.. pretty goddamn smart 👍👍
Some interesting options but all of them require vessels which add expense. I still like pumped hydro and hydro operated for storage as the energy amounts can be huge.
I think the main advantage for these is that they can be right where the turbines are. That way, the person performing maintenance only ever has to go to one location whether it’s for a turbine or a battery.
Instead of expensive concrete spheres they could use cheap thin lift bags(used for vessel recovery) that anchored to the seafloor and pump them with compressed air, compressor and generator could be installed above water with single air hose connecting the system to the seafloor.
@@UndecidedMF Thanks for the reply Matt. Actually something even more compelling is the idea that with the very large temperature gradient and with the abundance of cold water below 1000 meters, there is an opportunity to mine BTC combined with OTEC making them both economically viable as a synergistic enterprise for more details see the following rather fascinating video: Ocean Bitcoin Mining with Nathaniel Harmon 1,907 views Streamed live on Apr 26, 2022
I can't figure out why they would place the mechanical parts for the BEST system under water. It seems like keeping those above the water line and then just having a pully on the sea floor would make ALOT more sense from a cost perspective.
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
What about combining the two technologies of Water Reservoirs you pump water up into, that have Buoyancy generators. As the upper reservoir empties and generates electricity, the floating platforms descend to the bottom of the reservoir. Then the buoyancy generators are activated and held at the bottom when the reservoir is filled back up. When stored energy is needed, before turning on the hydroelectric generator, you could first draw power from the buoyancy generator as the platform floated to the top, and afterward use the hydroelectric generators. So in theory you'd get double the efficiency. Or would this just require more energy because the water would need to be pumped higher?
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.
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.
Could use a dual cylinder system where one cylinder floats and the other is mounted on the sea floor below it. When tide is high the floating cylinder could pull air down to the lower cylinder via a vacuum when the distance between cylinders is greater... And when the bottom cylinder is finally full of air the turbine could generate power at the next high tide making the greatest differential in energy conversion due to higher pressure at high tide due to more volume of water over the cylinder ...
What's the advantage to having the batteries next to the offshore turbines/solar? Cuz they'd have to be major in order to outweigh the instantly added maintenance & repair costs of being at sea, as opposed to running the electricity to land and using one of myriad storage options; such as gravity, flow, or air/heat storage systems.
I really like the cryo air storage systems. Not the most efficient but being able to build it anywhere means it will be the most practical in most places.
I think a closed loop system above ground would be interesting. Instead of water, could use materials that we generally just seal away and bury while hoping to forget about them. IE Mercury. Stupidly heavy liquid metal with density is so high, it could have a reduced difference in height and overall smaller footprint. A 'nucleur' option for sure though, since no one would want to live near one and if one ever leaked it'd be an environmental disaster.
I am most excited for boyant hydro, but they could save tons of construction and maintenance cost, if the complicated parts are above or near sea level and only have pully system down below.
Fascinating stuff. I noticed none of these projects address the ocean life that currently lives where these storage devices would be built. Low storage costs are great, but at what cost to the ocean's ecosystems?
When we describe the storage capacity of energy storage, are we talking about the total amount of energy which would be provided during the entire discharge or is it the output per timestep during the discharge?
this may be a stupid question, but what happens to these systems when ocean fauna and flora start to make their homes on/in them? Coral and fish have a tendency to make pretty much anything that's submerged in their ideal living zones their home. would this have an effect on these systems or are they specifically designed to operate at depths too deep for this to occur? Have ocean currents and shifting sands and seafloor topography been taken into account? I'm curious because I researched similar ideas a while back and got stumped with these questions so I would love to see how they managed to nullify those concerns. love the show by the way. awesome work.
I have like a million ideas for this kind of energy storage. But someone is probably already developing it in secret somewhere. How do you know when to take a chance and put some time into sorting out the kinks? This area is _very_ interesting!
Trying to reinvent the wheel, there are things called tidal and wave generation, tides cover base load bu having generators in different locations and there are wave generators that produce max power in waves of a meter . Never underestimate the power of moving water
very interesting but I'd be interested to see how it fits in with the ecology of those spaces it will be placed. We have made a fairly big mess of stuff on land, let's try not to do move that practice to the oceans.
when you pull out the water inside the chamber the pressure will be reduced and it will boils the remaining water inside. then it will absorb heat from the outside of the chamber, which will require more energy to do so. it means that there will be more losses of energy.
What about using geothermal vents near the ocean floor to heat air and pressurize tanks? It might not be in the most stable of ocean areas, but it seems like another source of renewable energy. OR in the absence of geothermal vents, put some datacenters down there, use their heat energy to help pressurize the tanks.
Did the calcs on this a year ago (had a similar idea...and i was certainly not the first one. This type of idea has been bandied about a lot over the last few years). It's just not economically competitive with batteries even if you try to use the cheapest possible materials.(and it's waaaaay more maintenance intensive. Installation costs don't really matter as soon as you have stuff running in saltwater. Maintenance costs are just goingtro eat you up in no time)
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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…
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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! 🙌
When you use BEST, you can actually produce energy when you time the Load and unloading phase in respect to the tides...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Awesome content! So many options of storing energy. I need to watch it several times over to fully understand. Thanks Matt!
☺️here for the positive vibe. Enormous thanks for your content to counter that Geopolitical mess that goes on.
You are doing a great job🤙
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Another superb video! This is one channel I watch religiously.
One small request. Please use kPa (kilopascals) instead of bar, which is obsolete. Thanks!
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
Underwater energy storage using pressure is a great idea. Especially the relatively passive ones that are basically concrete spheres or tubes.
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.
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.
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 😁
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.
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.
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.
I'm glad people are working on storage.
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%.
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.
This show has shown me just about everything could be a battery.
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.
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).
Wow these are compelling ideas of ways to store energy in bodies of water! Thanks for sharing Matt 🤯
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.
I wrote about this for my master in law research in South Africa. It's interesting to read the comments that are tech/engineering focused.
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.
Even at a higher cost, it doesn't use battery material resources. Good to see all these different energy ideas being tested. I'm sure we will end up with two dozen methods that each work best in different locations.
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.
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!
The recap at the end is great. Great formula.. keep it up :)
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
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.
Litium-Sulpher video please! Apparently an Accidental breakthrough. Very much in line with your videos. Hope this helps. Love your videos
So many great and new ideas for energy storage!!!
If in the open sea, some fish may use it as a shelter along with driftwood and seaweed sticking to these "floating batteries"
But with the water heating up using it as a heat sink may aid in general ocean heating
Wind farms are already leading to mini eco systems. Cause of the barnacles that grow on them leading to fish and to seal.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet ah But I wish you the same thing could be said for terrestrial ecosystem. Wind farms on the land cause multiple, multiple deaths of birds not to mention making it easier for some huckster behind endangered and mice, which in turn causes a trophic cascade
Harnessing atmospheric/hydro pressure is the KEY to green batteries at a large scale. The best solutions happen in nature.
Man the structural forces on that best system would be epic.
I like the idea of a large floating structure and the use of renewable energy to drag in under water...
I was just wondering if we could not increase the gains by doing this:
Build a structure that can also add compressed air in the ballasts. (making them naturally heavier so easier to sink or even potentially let gravity do the job)
Once they are at the bottom release the compressed air into series of air turbines that would generate electricity (in a vertical pipe system, this way on the way up the air would expand and pressure could be constant, allowing for multiple air turbines to work on the way up) AND increase the buoyancy of the ballasts
Gather the energy when the structure is going up again...
The potential could be:
1. Energy gathered when the ballasts are going down (If they can sink fast enough once filled with liquid air why not also gather the energy on the way down)
2. Energy gathered when releasing the compressed air (while going up air would expand, release more energy on the way up)
3. Energy gathered when going up again
I guess the question is: will it sink? Worst case scenario, have some ballasts filled with sea water too (when at the surface), it will increase the total weight of the whole platform and you can release the compressed air once at the bottom in 2 stages: first into the sea water filled ballasts to remove the water and increase buoyancy, then from those ballasts in a second step on the way up and therefore with higher pressure since going up the air now in those ballasts would expand.
If such structure is too complex to make, just fill the ballast with compressed air, drop it down, transfer the liquid air to a fix tank at the bottom that will work as an independent air generator with a fixed vertical air turbine to release the air back in the atmosphere at the surface but from the tank at the bottom.
Government of various countries should push innovative solutions like this.
I´m always watching your videos looking for new ideas. We have a lot of cuses of renewable energies here in Brazil and such a big potential to develop, but we are facing dark days to our research and development.
At 10:30, concerning the Ocean Grazer system where it pumps the evacuated water into flexible bladders. I presume this is so they don't have to worry about filtering or otherwise processing sea water as it enters and leaves the main chamber, as in the other examples?
Matt, at the end of May 2022, on UA-cam, I will have a video on the development of North Coast NSW. That is why your one UA-cam channel I watch
At times it sounded as though Matt’s dialog was running accelerated - but I realized that’s his speaking style.
There is something very misleading over that stated cost of $131-$232 per MWh as it's about 1,000 times lower than the capital cost of Li-Ion battery packs in 2021 (which is about $131 per KWh). Having looked at the Lazard Levalized Cost of Storage report, then what I believe is being quoted is the cost of storing one MWh per day at wholesale rates, which is a very different thing to the capital cost of something to hold MWh for the lifetime of the device (which Lazard assume to be 20 years). It appears to me that the costs are to store a MWh of energy on a 24 hour basis aimed at overnight storage.
I should add that if it costs just $131 per MWh of capacity for an installation with a 20 year lifetime, there would not be a cost problem with Li-Ion storage. The US consumes about 11 TWh of electricity per day. Thus at $131 per MWh, one day's consumption would be 11,000,000 x $131 = $1.4bn, or just $700m per year. That is a ridiculously low figure to have sufficient capacity to store one day's US power consumption. Of course what the real figure would be (using Lazards 350 day a year calculations, or 7,000 days plant lifetime) would be 11,000,000 x 7,000 x $131 = $10,000bn, or $500bn a year, a very different matter indeed. Other reports of capital costs for these Li-Ion battery farms support this.
I should add that Lazard does not get any prizes for the clarity of their report when they refer to the costs per MWh. However, there are some clues as one of their table calculations refers to a plant with an 400 MWh nameplate capacity, and they work out that it will deliver 2,520,000 MWh during the 20 year project life, which would work out at 6,300 full charge-discharge cycles and they assume 350 days a year for 20 years, or 7,000 days in total, and it seems they've built a 90% efficiency into this model.
I really like the idea of putting the storage at the bottom of the windmill - then the same electricity infrastructure can be used.. pretty goddamn smart 👍👍
Some interesting options but all of them require vessels which add expense. I still like pumped hydro and hydro operated for storage as the energy amounts can be huge.
I think the main advantage for these is that they can be right where the turbines are. That way, the person performing maintenance only ever has to go to one location whether it’s for a turbine or a battery.
Wow, this is so interesting. I am so glad to be reading “news” that holds hope for humanity.
Great work! Hopefully VC's will see this and empty their pockets into ocean grid storage.
I would like to hear more about utilization in fresh water lakes. I found reference to the Great Lakes that suggests 200-400m is feasible.
Ah man this is my first time noticing the green screen. Good job Matt!
Instead of expensive concrete spheres they could use cheap thin lift bags(used for vessel recovery) that anchored to the seafloor and pump them with compressed air, compressor and generator could be installed above water with single air hose connecting the system to the seafloor.
Thanks Matt, I’d love to see a show about OTEC someday. - Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion . Much appreciated.
Thanks for the suggestion!
@@UndecidedMF Thanks for the reply Matt. Actually something even more compelling is the idea that with the very large temperature gradient and with the abundance of cold water below 1000 meters, there is an opportunity to mine BTC combined with OTEC making them both economically viable as a synergistic enterprise for more details see the following rather fascinating video:
Ocean Bitcoin Mining with Nathaniel Harmon
1,907 views
Streamed live on Apr 26, 2022
I can't figure out why they would place the mechanical parts for the BEST system under water. It seems like keeping those above the water line and then just having a pully on the sea floor would make ALOT more sense from a cost perspective.
True, that is an good option.
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
What about combining the two technologies of Water Reservoirs you pump water up into, that have Buoyancy generators. As the upper reservoir empties and generates electricity, the floating platforms descend to the bottom of the reservoir. Then the buoyancy generators are activated and held at the bottom when the reservoir is filled back up. When stored energy is needed, before turning on the hydroelectric generator, you could first draw power from the buoyancy generator as the platform floated to the top, and afterward use the hydroelectric generators.
So in theory you'd get double the efficiency.
Or would this just require more energy because the water would need to be pumped higher?
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.
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.
Could use a dual cylinder system where one cylinder floats and the other is mounted on the sea floor below it. When tide is high the floating cylinder could pull air down to the lower cylinder via a vacuum when the distance between cylinders is greater... And when the bottom cylinder is finally full of air the turbine could generate power at the next high tide making the greatest differential in energy conversion due to higher pressure at high tide due to more volume of water over the cylinder ...
It can help lessen the erosion around the cliff areas
What's the advantage to having the batteries next to the offshore turbines/solar? Cuz they'd have to be major in order to outweigh the instantly added maintenance & repair costs of being at sea, as opposed to running the electricity to land and using one of myriad storage options; such as gravity, flow, or air/heat storage systems.
I really like the cryo air storage systems. Not the most efficient but being able to build it anywhere means it will be the most practical in most places.
I think a closed loop system above ground would be interesting. Instead of water, could use materials that we generally just seal away and bury while hoping to forget about them. IE Mercury. Stupidly heavy liquid metal with density is so high, it could have a reduced difference in height and overall smaller footprint.
A 'nucleur' option for sure though, since no one would want to live near one and if one ever leaked it'd be an environmental disaster.
I am most excited for boyant hydro, but they could save tons of construction and maintenance cost, if the complicated parts are above or near sea level and only have pully system down below.
The maintenance on water based electric systems is incomprehensibly expensive. Only by channeling water are these systems able to be affordable.
Fascinating stuff. I noticed none of these projects address the ocean life that currently lives where these storage devices would be built. Low storage costs are great, but at what cost to the ocean's ecosystems?
When we describe the storage capacity of energy storage, are we talking about the total amount of energy which would be provided during the entire discharge or is it the output per timestep during the discharge?
I would assume it's the entire discharge, or they would likely state a unit of time.
this may be a stupid question, but what happens to these systems when ocean fauna and flora start to make their homes on/in them? Coral and fish have a tendency to make pretty much anything that's submerged in their ideal living zones their home. would this have an effect on these systems or are they specifically designed to operate at depths too deep for this to occur? Have ocean currents and shifting sands and seafloor topography been taken into account? I'm curious because I researched similar ideas a while back and got stumped with these questions so I would love to see how they managed to nullify those concerns.
love the show by the way. awesome work.
This channel is a stress reliever for engineers like me
Always here to relieve some pressure!
I have like a million ideas for this kind of energy storage. But someone is probably already developing it in secret somewhere. How do you know when to take a chance and put some time into sorting out the kinks? This area is _very_ interesting!
Trying to reinvent the wheel, there are things called tidal and wave generation, tides cover base load bu having generators in different locations and there are wave generators that produce max power in waves of a meter . Never underestimate the power of moving water
very interesting but I'd be interested to see how it fits in with the ecology of those spaces it will be placed. We have made a fairly big mess of stuff on land, let's try not to do move that practice to the oceans.
when you pull out the water inside the chamber the pressure will be reduced and it will boils the remaining water inside. then it will absorb heat from the outside of the chamber, which will require more energy to do so. it means that there will be more losses of energy.
What about using geothermal vents near the ocean floor to heat air and pressurize tanks? It might not be in the most stable of ocean areas, but it seems like another source of renewable energy. OR in the absence of geothermal vents, put some datacenters down there, use their heat energy to help pressurize the tanks.
Great idea the one of the "ocean balls" (may not be the "best" acronym, but what a heck of a name!)
Did the calcs on this a year ago (had a similar idea...and i was certainly not the first one. This type of idea has been bandied about a lot over the last few years). It's just not economically competitive with batteries even if you try to use the cheapest possible materials.(and it's waaaaay more maintenance intensive. Installation costs don't really matter as soon as you have stuff running in saltwater. Maintenance costs are just goingtro eat you up in no time)
I have thought of making a large funnel with turbines on the bottom. Then putting them in oceans or lakes. To make water falls to make energy.
I´ve always thought about the boyancy battery, but now i think maybe pumping air into a seabed level ballooon could be the best option.