Not just blowing in the wind: Compressing air for renewable energy storage

[BlueStreak]

17. That's interesting. Do you care to explain why

a) there are so few of these if it is all working out so well; and

b) there continues to be so much research in other technologies (such as flow batteries) if this is such a well-proven concept?

What they never want to talk about is the efficiency. It seems to be decent -- maybe 40% or a little better -- if you are talking about a 24-hour cycle. It isn't clear to me that any of these operations sees this as a technology that is suitable for working well beyond the 24-hour cycle. You know, not every day has exactly the same AC demand on the grid. And not every night has the same amount of wind available for generation. Clearly pumped water provides storage that has minimal degradation over weeks or even months. And flow batteries potentially could scale to provide something similar.

Again, I am not against the concept, but an not convinced it is "all that". I make my living investing and see all sorts of hype in the news as schools pitch ideas for research bucks and entrepreneurs try to get seed money from the equity markets. So I hope you will understand why I am skeptical of all this current hype surrounding compressed air. The fact that it has been around so long and never really established much of a foothold is a pretty good reason to be skeptical, I think.