compressed air and hydro energy storage project

[IronWing]

Kind of cool.

http://www.mining.com/thirty-year-o...ias-first-clean-energy-storage-facility-kind/

 

[deadlyapp]

The only thing novel about this is that they're using compressed air in order to displace the water, rather than using a water pump to pump it into storage. It seems far more wasteful to compress the air, which generates huge amounts of heat, and also the possibility of air leakage through the rock structure. A good pumped storage pump can develop 93% efficiency in pumping and energy recovery and use the same equipment, rather than this which needs two sets of equipment.

Cute, but not really a good solution.