Google Launches CO2 Battery Plants for Long-Duration Storage of Renewable Energy (ieee.org)
- Reference: 0180435325
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/21/2337215/google-launches-co2-battery-plants-for-long-duration-storage-of-renewable-energy
- Source link: https://spectrum.ieee.org/co2-battery-energy-storage
"Google [2]likes the concept so much that it plans to rapidly deploy the facilities in all of its key data-center locations in Europe, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region."
> Developed by the Milan-based company [3]Energy Dome , the bubble and its surrounding machinery demonstrate a first-of-its-kind "CO2 Battery," as the company calls it... And in 2026, replicas of this plant will start popping up across the globe. We mean that literally. It takes just half a day to inflate the bubble. The rest of the facility takes less than two years to build and can be done just about anywhere there's 5 hectares of flat land.
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> The first to build one outside of Sardinia will be one of India's largest power companies, [4]NTPC Limited . The company expects to complete its CO2 Battery sometime in 2026 at the Kudgi power plant in Karnataka, in India. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, the public utility [5]Alliant Energy received the all clear from authorities to begin construction of one in 2026 to supply power to 18,000 homes... The idea is to provide electricity-guzzling data centers with round-the-clock clean energy, even when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. The partnership with Energy Dome, announced in July, marked Google's first investment in long-duration energy storage...
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> CO2 Batteries check a lot of boxes that other approaches don't. They don't need special topography like pumped-hydro reservoirs do. They don't need critical minerals like electrochemical and other batteries do. They use components for which supply chains already exist. Their expected lifetime stretches nearly three times as long as lithium-ion batteries. And adding size and storage capacity to them significantly decreases cost per kilowatt-hour. Energy Dome expects its LDES solution to be 30 percent cheaper than lithium-ion.
>
> China has taken note. China Huadian Corp. and Dongfang Electric Corp. are reportedly building a CO2-based energy-storage facility in the Xinjiang region of northwest China.
Google's senior lead for energy storage says they like how Energy Dome's solution can work in any region. "They can really plug and play this."
And they expect Google to help the technology "reach a massive commercial stage."
[1] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/26/2123234/google-will-help-scale-long-duration-energy-storage-solution-for-clean-power
[2] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/long-term-energy-storage/
[3] https://energydome.com/
[4] https://ntpc.co.in/
[5] https://www.alliantenergy.com/
Re: (Score:1)
But then if you let the CO2 out of the system and into the atmosphere, you are defeating the purpose of capturing it in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
> But then if you let the CO2 out of the system and into the atmosphere, you are defeating the purpose of capturing it in the first place.
You don't. The CO2 is reused.
We need a mix and we are getting it (Score:2)
Renewable energy at scale requires a mix of generation types, of storage types, of locations, of temporal phasing, etc etc. And that’s what we’re getting: for storage, we are getting short, medium and long term storage solutions using thermal, chemical, kinetic, gravitational and other mechanisms. This heterogenous approach lowers risks associated with single points of failure such as materials supply chain crunches or inability to meet demand spikes. It means a higher initial cost per kWh becau
I've seen work on this (Score:2, Informative)
I've had some inside access to this tech in recent past. The main problem is efficiency. It's horrendous. You lose tremendous amounts of energy doing this, and you need quite a bit of energy to maintain the compressed state. We're nowhere near mainline chemical batteries in terms of efficiency numbers, and whatever numbers they're claiming on their website are likely specifically negating some critical losses. I've seen efficiency numbers as low as 20-25%, through they can really struggle to push into upper
Re: (Score:2)
Quoting from the Google blog post linked in the summary,
> The technology has already proven successful, having injected electrons into the Italian grid for more than three years, thanks to their commercial demo facility, and now with their full-scale 20MW-200MWh commercial plant.
> By supporting multiple commercial deployments of Energy Dome's technology globally, and making an investment in the company, we aim to bring this technology to scale faster and at lower costs.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if Google is investing in them, they've probably done their due diligence and found it's real.
Hmm (Score:3)
2000t generating 20MW over 10h... that's 2 milliion kg generating 720GJ. Equivalent to lifting that 2000t by 36km .
Color me very, very skeptical.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't gravity storage. It liquifies the CO2 by pressurizing it.
Re: (Score:2)
According to Wikipedia, 2000t of CO2 can store [1]100MWh [wikipedia.org] which is 360GJ, half of the 720GJ I calculated above. So that would be 20MW for 5h, not 10h.
So I guess I was right to be a bit skeptical, but am still surprised by how much energy can be stored.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_carbon_dioxide_energy_storage#Process
battery? (Score:2)
Aren't these operations only considered efficient if the liquid COâ is a byproduct of another, much more expensive, operation?
Do we think they're doing this because there's some flaw in an existing California law where they can get credit for using a former Linde facility as a 'battery'?
Re: (Score:2)
It is a closed loop system. Smallish tanks for the liquid co2, great big football field or larger dome for gaseous CO2. Website does not have dimensions, I'd guess the dome varies in size based on total energy desired.
As such, it is like worrying about the inner loop water in a nuclear reactor. Since you theoretically only need that initial charge, it rounds to zero per unit of energy over time.
Re:Why not just compress air? (Score:5, Informative)
CO2 liquifies at Room Temperature, air does not. CO2 has higher energy density. CO2 has a higher round trip efficiency.
CO2 can be turned into a liquid at roughly 30C (86F) when under pressure (about 70 bar). To turn air into a liquid, you must cool it to extreme cryogenic temperatures (around -196C). Liquid CO2 is roughly 400 times denser than gaseous CO2 at atmospheric pressure. Because it stays liquid at "ambient" (normal) temperatures, it can be stored in standard steel tanks without the need for massive refrigeration systems. CO2 transitions between gas and liquid so easily at moderate pressures, the system loses very little energy during the phase change. In a typical air-based system, much of the energy is lost as "waste heat" during compression. In the CO2 battery, that heat is captured and stored in "thermal bricks" and then used later to turn the liquid CO2 back into gas, making the cycle highly efficient.
Re: Why not just compress air? (Score:2)
Probably wouldn't be much singing. I imagine they won't be built in populated areas
Re: (Score:2)
Not enough CO2. 2000 tons seems like a lot, but the Lake Nyos disaster which killed people within 25km was a release of 100,000 to 300,000 tons of CO2. A release of 2000 tons would be a major industrial accident but not an area-wide disaster.
Moderate the parent comment up! (Score:3)
Thank you, Bartoku, that is a very helpful explanation.
A huge amount of CO2 would prevent escape. (Score:1)
If the CO2 is somehow released, it will not be possible to drive away from the accident because car engines require oxygen to burn fuel.
Would probably be fine... (Score:2)
The CO2 should have to escape through whatever opening is created, and ripstop is pretty standard for this sort of thing, keeping openings small. A venting liquid CO2 tank would be limited by evaporation.
The danger zone would depend on the size of the hole, but like old CO2 fire extinguishers, CO2 tends to disburse fast, and the lethal range for it is drastically higher than things like carbon monoxide, ammonia, and such.
Plus, think of the future! An EV would operate just fine, and a couple minutes would
Re: (Score:2)
> If the CO2 is somehow released, it will not be possible to drive away from the accident because car engines require oxygen to burn fuel.
Well, that, and because humans require oxygen to remain conscious. If there's so little oxygen in the air that your car won't start, your car won't be the worst of your problems.
OTOH your self-driving EV could perhaps evacuate your unconscious body from the area :)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for all the details!
Something learned today.
Still, only the (re)compression all the CO2 will set you back a $22 per metric ton every time.
And turbines aren't that efficient either.
I wonder how much will be left when taking all the costs and inefficiencies into account.
Re: (Score:2)
CO2 can operate at ambient temperatures vs cryogenic requirements for liquid air. That’s a major advantage
Re: (Score:1)
I'm curious about the "thermal bricks." I can't think of a material with a higher specific heat than water, and the diagrams show water in the heat-exchanger areas. How much water is needed to store the latent heat of phase change? And how well insulated does that heat-storage mechanism need to be? The water is closed-loop, so consumption in operation will be small, but if a large amount is needed for installation, that could constrain locations. If not water, what material is used for "thermal bricks"?
Closed cycle (Score:2)
Reading the site page, it is closed cycle. The big gas dome holds more or less atmosphere temperature and pressure CO2. There are one or more tanks holding relatively non-cryogenic liquid CO2.
When there is excess power, pumps liquify CO2 into the tanks. When power is demanded, evaporating CO2 goes through a turbine to produce power, then into the dome.
Water is used, most likely to cool the freshly compressed CO2, and warm expanded CO2 after the turbine.