• Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It would be cool to see huge investments into battery storage. If we could create a battery that doesn’t just leak energy from storing, we could generate power in one location and ship it out where it’s needed. There could be remote energy production plants using geothermal or hydroelectric power that ship out these charged batteries to locations all over. It would let us better utilize resources instead of having to have cities anchored around these sources.

    Or we could generate a ton of power all at once, store it and use it as needed rather having to have on demand energy production

    Hell with better batteries even fossil fuels begin to be climate friendly since you could store the massive energy created and know you’re using close to 100% of it.

    • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      It would be cool to see huge investments into battery storage.

      Globally humanity already invests over 10 Billion dollars per year in advancing battery technology.

      If we could create a battery that doesn’t just leak energy from storing…

      In order to build what you are talking about will almost certainly require real room temperature super conductors. We can get close, maybe, with the next generation of Aluminum-Air or Iron-Air batteries but this is big pimping. It’s incredibly complicated and difficult.

      It’s like Fusion Power. We can see a future where we have it figured out and working but it’s still some years, if not decades, away.

    • njordomir@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Kind of an unconventional battery, but I’ve heard of solar and wind being used to pump water uphill into reservoirs and then released through a hydro plant when the sun/wind aren’t shining/blowing. I’d be curious to know the amount of production lost from storing it this way.

      • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I heard the loss comes from evaporation. Another cool idea I heard was using a mining cart. So its not practical but I think the idea is cook because I’m pretty science illiterate but it got me thinking about what a battery actually is. So you drag a mine cart up a hill with energy produced using renewable energy and then let it go down the hill and collect the stored energy with its motion. Technically there isn’t anything like evaporation so you could store the mine cart up the hill with no energy loss.

        • njordomir@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Interesting. Didn’t consider the evaporation. I imagine friction could effect the minecarts, but no idea to what degree. Some loss is gonna happen so matter what. If I’m understanding correctly, even nuclear, built away from population centers, will lose some power due to transmission distances.