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"
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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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.
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.
This concept was started 3-5 years ago, when retail batteries where $500/kwh. They are now under $100/kwh. Concept is worthwhile for diversification of resources and talent.
There's not enough minable copper or lithium to make all of the batteries we will need. So e alternatives will have to emerge if we are to reduce the need for generating power on demand with fuels.
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
The number of decommissioned but still usable batteries are growing fast though, and plenty of storage sites use old battery packs, both from cars and home energy storage and stuff like it
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.
Please let this be viable.
The more renewable energy and storage, the better.
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.
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