Please let this be viable.
The more renewable energy and storage, the better.
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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On the downside, Energy Dome’s facility takes up about twice as much land as a comparable capacity lithium-ion battery would. And the domes themselves, which are about the height of a sports stadium at their apex, and longer, might stand out on a landscape and draw some NIMBY pushback.
This is surprisingly good! I would have figured it would have taken far more than twice the land than a Lithium battery solution.
I run a consulting practice around flexibility. Been around the energy space for 15 years. Boy if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "grid scale [x] will soon be everywhere"
Stockholders and aalesmen make them put that towards the end... to make investors feel dizzy I think
Eh, HRSG's got real popular in the 90s and now most major plants have them. Its not a rapidly changing space, dont get me wrong. But new shit comes around every so often.
Sure wish they mentioned the effeciency.
Damned good question, and I played stump-the-search-engine for 15 minutes and it's like they're AVOIDING that question
Could be very high, even the waste heat from the compression could be used to achieve more compression and turbines get to above 90%, that all depends on the scales they're building this at. 70% overall doesn't seem unrealistic as an educated guess.
On their website (energydome.com) they claim “75%+” round trip efficiency, so not a bad guess!
That’s a hell of a lot better than most other systems. If true, and if scalable, this is a huge innovation.
compressors, turbines (like steam turbines), piping, some of which heat-resistant (500C), container for liquid carbon dioxide, lots of plastic for the bubble, something for thermal storage, dry and clean carbon dioxide, these aren't unusual or restricted resources, don't depend on critical raw materials or anything like that
Compressed air without heat recovery is more like 30%, so this is huge
Carbon dioxide can be liquefied relatively easily which is what i guess makes this efficient
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Sure wish they mentioned the effeciency.
Without it you should dismiss the whole article as worthless garbage
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It came from a gas supplier....
Where do you think supplier got it from?
Also: WHERE ARE THE ROUNDTRIP EFFICIENCY NUMBERS???
This CO2 is acting as a reusable fluid in a closed loop. The initial capture of the CO2 costs energy, but the battery keeps using the same CO2 over and over again. So the question of efficiency should be more about land usage and maintenance of the rest of the parts and the labor needed for each megawatt stored vs what other grid scale energy storage costs in materials and labor.
The rough reality is that batteries aren't going to be up to the task of grid scale energy storage unless they have a couple huge breakthroughs. Something like this is a far less materially expensive way to store energy for later use.
Currently most grid scale energy storage is just pumping water up a hill and letting it back down through a generator. It is extremely limited in where it can be used and requires tremendous space to be effective.
Compressing gas generates heat, and a significant part of that heat will be lost. Heat dissipation is irreversible, and this lowers efficiency a lot.
BTW the same reason why in industry, pneumatic drives are universally replaced by electric motors: Their efficiency is too low.
There is a thermal energy storage included as s major part. This works because compressing CO2 to 55atm adiabatically heats it up to some 450-ish C, so that heat is pretty high grade, and only the final stage cools it down with heat exchanger open to air. In discharging direction, some heat is taken from outside air to evaporate part of CO2 and heat stored is used up
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We had these things called Gasometers in the UK for a long time. They expanded with the amount of gas stored in them, and they kept the pressure of the local gas supply up. A local gas reservoir, or "gas battery" if you like.
These bubbles are basically the same idea but at higher pressure.
It's still near atmospheric pressure. Liquid CO2 expanding is powering the gas turbines.
Ah the bubble is the expansion volume. Not the storage volume... got it. I had it backwards.
So yes, very similar then.
I imagine that the bubble portion is light weight enough, one could put it on the roof of a data center, apartment building, strip mall, etc. That appears to be the piece that takes up the most space.
Another thought. I wonder if the bubble portion could be oriented vertically, maybe inside a simple enclosure to protect it from wind.
I was thinking about much larger scale bubbles in "unwanted" geological depressions such as old open pit mines or rock quarries. The depression in the ground might offer more protection allowing it to scale up higher in volume.
I wonder how resilient they are to big winds.
Also from the article:
If the worst happens and the dome is punctured, 2,000 tonnes of CO2 will enter the atmosphere. That’s equivalent to the emissions of about 15 round-trip flights between New York and London on a Boeing 777. “It’s negligible compared to the emissions of a coal plant,” Spadacini says. People will also need to stay back 70 meters or more until the air clears, he says.
People will also need to stay back 70 meters.
Huge amounts of carbon dioxide can be far more dangerous. The Lake Nyos disaster has killed over 1700 people, at up to 25 kilometers distance.
160km/hr as per TFA.
Guilty, I only skimmed it. Thanks.
And if there is a known high wind coming, the plant can forcefully go through the compression cycle to remove the bubble.
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The article also mentions that they can deflate it in around 10 hours
Sounds pretty good
Wonder how small you can scale these and retain efficiency, at twice the footprint (but I'm guessing a lot more volume) of a lithium grid battery, will we see these replacing home batteries down the line?
They are talking hectares in this and it looks like the power density is below that of batteries, but its also cheaper per MWh.
I home long term battery makes a lot of sense, I have thought for a while something that goes from water and the air into methane or even liquid fuel would be highly beneficial as it could run from a generators through the winter and act for long term storage without requiring a turbine.
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