Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The CCP has decided that 5 years from now, the price of batteries and compressed air energy storage will decrease by 30%. But even if these promises aren’t just hot talk, the 30% drop isn’t enough.
Climate change: China cuts energy storage system costs for industry to stay ahead of world by 2030, under 5-year plan
Manufacturing costs of large chemical-based energy storage systems will be cut by 30% by 2025, putting the industry ahead of the world by 2030. capacity, according to government plans
Eric Ng+ TRACKING
Published: 8:30 am, February 24, 2022The Chinese government plans to cut the cost of energy storage systems by 2025 to help local industries stay ahead of the world as the vanguard of new energy storage technology 5 the following year.
According to the 5-year plan organized by the organization National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA). The document has been sent to local governments and centrally run businesses for implementation.
The Industry Development Plan for 2021-25 states: “By 2030, China’s new energy storage will be comprehensively developed based on the market, with proprietary technology, production capacity and leading innovation. top of the world”.
Energy storage is a key part of the Chinese government’s strategy to decarbonize the energy system and put the world’s second-largest economy on the path to achieving carbon neutral by 2060. Affordable energy storage is key in turning solar and wind power into commercially viable fossil fuel energy alternatives that help offset for industry volatility and dependence on weather patterns.
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It is clear to me that these promises were drawn up by politicians, not engineers.
Pneumatic energy storage suffers from a serious thermodynamic vulnerability.
When you compress the air, hot air. When you decompress air, to draw energy from your storage, the gas draws heat out of the environment. Ice begins to form rapidly around the decompression system.
Ice is a good insulator. This is a big problem, especially in winter, because unless the compressed air heats up to ambient temperature before it is used to drive the turbine, you will lose an unacceptable amount of energy. received that you tried to hoard. So you either have to severely limit the energy decompression/withdrawal ratio, to minimize ice formation, or you have to plan and physically remove the ice as it forms.
A serious compressed air storage system will produce a lot of ice.
Maybe China has a solution – they have some pretty smart engineers. But in my opinion, compressed air storage is a technology that is more appealing to accountants and politicians than engineers. Looks great on paper, lousy in practice.
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