One of the simplest ways to store energy is to pump water uphill and then release it later to run a turbine, and now RheEnergise has added a simple tweak, not using water:
It uses a proprietary “high-tech fluid” it calls R-19, which it says is both environmentally neutral and 2.5 times as dense as water.
The result: you can generate the same power from just 40% of the elevation change, using tanks just 40% of the size.
That “dramatically” cuts down on materials and installation costs – and thus energy storage costs – and since the tanks are so much smaller, they’re often able to be buried underground.
For significant amounts of energy storage, you’re not talking *tanks*, you’re talking *lakes.*
For example…
https://www.ge.com/news/reports/how-the-swiss-turned-an-alpine-peak-into-a-battery-the-size-of-a-nuclear-plant
”2.5 times as dense as water”
Liquid dirt?
Might be something useful at the municipal level.
I’m wondering the state of low-head hydro. Plenty of opportunity for that.
Euan Mearns and Roger Andrews published an interesting study at the euanmearns dot com Energy Matters blog, showing how the Laguna del Diablo on the Baja peninsula could be used for pumped storage sufficient to make California a hundred per cent green, independent of sunshine and doldrums.