this video is sponsored by Hoymiles around the world nations are phasing out coal power plants
in favor of solar and wind yes to reduce your two missions but also because they're cheaper
but there is a catch when the solar aren't constant so you need energy storage as well
and while carbon dioxide has been vilified for decades what if it's actually not the villain
in this story but the hero with properties that make it good for storing energy well well
well how the turntables yes a carbon dioxide battery I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci
carbon dioxide or CO2 is frequently considered the main culprit behind global warming despite
not being a particularly strong greenhouse gas yet we need greenhouse gases in our atmosphere because
they help keep the Earth's surface warmer than the freezing emptiness of the surrounding space the
problem is the scale at which we're pumping CO2 in the atmosphere by burning vast amounts of fossil
fuels which is upsetting the delicate balance between too hot and too cold this is the main
driving force behind the research and development of clean and carbon-free renewable energy sources
like wind and solar However the fact that these Technologies are becoming more cost effective
than fossil fuels is really what's driving most of their demand this is similar to how Sleek design
performance and low cost and not the fight against climate change is why Teslas and other EVS are so
desirable but as I mentioned at the start of the video These technologies have a major hurdle to
overcome intermittency they're not always able to produce power when the grid demands it the
key to overcoming this problem is energy storage we simply produce all the renewable energy we can
whenever we can and store the Surplus production for when the wind and solar power isn't enough to
meet the demand now that I've moved into my new home I get to go on my solar Journey all over
again and that's for a sponsor this week Hoymiles comes in Hoy miles is one of the fastest growing
solar micro inverter companies globally and their microverters take the DC power from your solar
panels and inverts it to AC for your home Hoymiles combines the amazing engineering of super
efficient and long-lasting 25-year warranty micro inverters in America with amazing prices they make
the common one-on-one inverter meaning every solar panel gets its own inverter but the really amazing
part is they're two in one and four in one micro inverters which work on two or four solar panels
respectively saving you up to 50 percent on micro inverter costs compared to the competition and
it's even cheaper than a solar Edge string inverter unlike string inverters that work
on all your solar panels and last around 10 years Mark inverters only invert the power from one to
four panels meaning less work heat and way longer life of 25 plus years also shading on one panel
only affects that panel compared are the string inverters in series were shared on one panel
drops the output of the entire string of panels Hoymiles also includes free lifetime energy
monitoring meaning you can check on your panels and inverters in real time to see how your system
is performing whether you're considering going solar or a solar installer check out the links
in the description to see why I've decided to go with Hoymiles for my system huge thanks to Hoy
miles and you for supporting the show it will be thanks to energy storage coupled with Renewables
that you can enjoy stable and reliable electricity at lower cost and traditional fossil fuel power
utility grids but many of the current energy storage Technologies are either too expensive
require massive amounts of space or require energy intensive mining of rare earth materials
like nickel and Cobalt which are in limited Supply so what we need most right now is a cost-effective
long-lasting energy storage solution we can build easily and quickly anywhere in the world and that
is made out of abundant cheap and easy to produce materials already in large Supply is that really
so much to ask for well according to the Italian style of energy Dome it's not their solution build
the world's first carbon dioxide battery now I know what you're probably thinking if at a dime
for every startup that claimed their breakthrough Tech would change the game for this or that only
to watch YouTube video two years later explaining why it didn't but energy Dome is different in less
than three years the milan-based startup founded by Claudio spotachini in 2019 has already built
an operating commercial pilot scale prototype in Sardinia Italy now it has secured funds to build a
full-sized utility scale version for the European utility a2a that was amazingly fast and it's a
testament to how effective their technology is but how does the CO2 battery work in essence the CO2
battery worked very similarly to liquid Air energy storage only uses carbon dioxide instead of air
when charging the system takes carbon dioxide gas from a huge bladder-like atmospheric gas holder or
Dome and use electricity to compress condense and store the resulting liquid carbon dioxide
in steel vessels at ambient 10 temperatures and pressures around 60 to 70 bar when discharging
the liquid CO2 is evaporated and the gas Powers a turbine generating electricity the turbine's
exhaust fills the Dome with gaseous CO2 at happy temperatures and pressures returning the battery
to its initial State at its core of storing energies about fighting the natural equilibrium of
nature push electricity into a chemical battery and a chemical reaction occurs that builds up
chemical potential energy that can be used later with air picture a balloon as you fill it up the
pressure inside the balloon is much higher than in the room and if you let it go the balloon will
try to reach equilibrium releasing that energy and go flying across the room but what makes
this battery different and most importantly why should you care there are several key advantages
to CO2 batteries the first is the working fluid itself CO2 contrary to air carbon dioxide is one
of the few gases we can compress into a liquid at ambient temperatures this eliminates the need
for cryogenic storage that requires temperatures below 238 degrees Fahrenheit around 150 degrees
Celsius a sec second Advantage is that the system incorporates a thermal energy storage
system to capture the heat released when the carbon dioxide condenses and uses that same
energy to evaporate the liquid carbon dioxide when the battery is discharging this makes the
battery more efficient than a liquid compressed air battery which requires external heating to
boil and liquefy the air furthermore and perhaps most importantly the basic components of the CO2
battery are steel carbon dioxide and water plus standard off-the-shelf equipment like
pumps compressors and Generator turbines since we can find steel water and CO2 anywhere in the
world and Equipment can be shipped almost anywhere there's no place where this couldn't in principle
work additionally these sources are in large Supply in the Earth's surface this means that
this technology avoids the supply chain hurdles that Lithium-ion batteries and other technologies
will almost certainly face in the future so now we know how the system stores energy but how much
energy can it store and how does it compare to other Technologies in terms of performance while
while the pilot plant has a capacity of 4 megawatt hours and is rated for a power of 2.5 megawatts
this is enough to power close to 4 400 average Italian homes for a little over an hour and a half
not much but remember this is a pilot plant their larger utility scale facility which is expected
to go online at the end of 2023 is a 200 megawatt hour battery that can deliver up to 20 megawatts
of power that will be enough to power 35 000 average Italian homes for 10 hours straight or 350
000 homes for about an hour the good news is that if we need more power or storage these systems are
relatively easy to scale up by simply adding more liquid CO2 storage vessels more generator turbines
and making the Dome bigger according to energy Dome the system can store between 6 and 11 times
more energy than any other compressed air storage device currently available and with a dramatically
higher round trip efficiency of between 75 and 80 percent dwarfing compressed air is 45 to
70 percent efficiency these efficiency ratings compare pretty closely to Pumped Hydro storage
systems which can achieve around 80 efficiency pumped Hydro currently makes up around the same
percentage of Italy's grid as wind solar and other Renewables combined but where the CO2
battery truly shines is in cost since this battery uses no special equipment and no exotic materials
like lithium or Cobalt the cost can be brought far below the competition including Lithium-ion
batteries according to the energy Dome CEO Claudio spotachini the levelized cost of storage or lcos
for a full-scale 25 megawatt 200 megawatt hour plant will be in the range around 50 to 60 dollars
per megawatt hour of stored energy for comparison the lcos for a four hour 100 megawatt 400 megawatt
hour lithium ion battery system is between 131 and 232 dollars per megawatt hour while compressed
air storage systems can cost a whopping 300 per megawatt hour or more even pumped Hydro systems
which can last up to 150 years have lcos prices around 186 dollars per megawatt hour nearly four
times the cost of the CO2 battery you could think that this doesn't have anything to do with you or
I but remember renewable energy needs renewable energy storage so the cost of that storage is
unavoidably tied to the levelized cost of energy which ultimately determines how much you will end
up paying for electricity reducing the cost of storage by a factor of two or three could have
a significant impact making solar and wind even cheaper than they are now helping phase off fossil
fuels even faster but of course as everything in engineering there is always a trade-off even
though the system is about as efficient as pumped Hydro an efficiency of 75 to 80 implies that we
lose about 20 to 25 percent of that energy in the battery compared to lithium ion batteries which
boast some of the highest round trip efficiency ratings at around 90 percent that means CO2
batteries waste over twice as much energy as lithium ion battery counterparts do another
important performance metric is energy density which measures the amount of charge per unit
volume this gives us an idea of how small we can make a battery according to Android energy Dome
liquid carbon dioxide at 70 bars has an energy density of around 66 Watt hours per liter but
that's just the CO2 the real energy density for the entire system is much lower because we have to
factor in the volume of all the necessary hardware water tanks turbines and let's not forget the huge
Dome to house the CO2 gas when the battery is discharged all of which drops to energy density
down even further let's do a quick calculation as I mentioned a minute ago the biggest commission
storage plant is set to store 200 megawatt hours and the closed system is set to pack a couple of
hundred metric tons of CO2 so let's assume 200 000 kilograms when the battery is discharged all
that CO2 is stored as gas in the dome at ambient temperature and pressure with this information
plus co2's molecular weight which is 44 a pressure of one atmosphere and a temperature of 290 degrees
Kelvin which is pretty much standard ambient conditions we can use the universal gas law to
calculate the volume that that CO2 will occupy and therefore the volume of the Dome compared to the
Dome the size of the other parts of the system are negligible so we'll use that volume to estimate
the energy density of the system this is almost at the High high end of Pumped Hydra which is one of
the least energy dense storage systems we know of but if we compare this to a lithium ion cell the
CO2 battery has a density almost 200 times lower so we won't be seeing Tesla's driving around with
huge domes on the rooftops anytime soon although that could be really steampunk meets cyberpunk
but I digress either way while not an option for mobile applications energy Dome CO2 battery has
other things going for it that make it an ideal candidate for stationary storage where size and
weight doesn't matter all that much for example CO2 batteries last at least twice as long as
the demand battery is around 30 years without any degradation or loss in capacity this is one of the
factors that makes this energy so cheap and it's why I think we'll see these massive white pockets
of carbon dioxide lining our future solar and wind farms in places where Hydro isn't an option
it's no wonder that energy Dome already struck a deal with orsted the First Energy company to
transition to Renewables from fossil fuels in the world's leader in offshore wind power to build a
series of 20 megawatt 200 megawatt hour storage facilities and some of their wind farms again
remember that this is happening only three years after the company's Inception in terms of safety
and environmental impacts there is very little risk of CO2 leaking into the atmosphere since
it's in a closed system similar to Freon gas in our car's AC system but even if it did the amount
of CO2 would be a drop in the bucket compared to the 6 000 million metric tons of CO2 already in
the atmosphere or the amount coming from burning fossil fuels the CO2 battery won't take carbon
dioxide directly from the atmosphere and store it instead we'll need to charge it at the beginning
of its operation from an economics point of view this would create a market demand for industrial
carbon dioxide boosting the development and deployment of carbon capture devices like my good
friend Matt Farrell from Underside as I've covered in previous videos but sadly just like with
recycling the question that hasn't been answered is will it just be cheaper to make new CO2 than to
actually carbon capture it from the atmosphere this is the problem with Recycling and I think
we have to wait and see ideally all the CO2 for CO2 batteries should come from carbon capture in
the atmosphere because then it's not just energy storage but it's also reducing the amount of CO2
in the atmosphere when when but something tells me we're gonna have to force companies to do that
because it might not be as cheap as buying new CO2 but what I find even more exciting is how simple
this technology really is and with big utilities like the ones in orstad and a2a jumping on board
the CO2 battery bandwagon I don't think it'll be long before other companies catch on and start
developing newer and even better CO2 batteries to compete with energy dome in my opinion the fact
that this technology actually already exists today in the real world and it's being rolled
out at a commercial utility scale and only one year's time is what makes this such a promising
and potential candidate for energy storage long term so compared to compressed air or cryogenic
batteries which we've covered before this has a huge Advantage because it doesn't have to be
frozen down to near absolute zero this can work at room temperatures that's the magical component of
2 that makes this battery possible and that leads to a much better round trip efficiency plus it's
really easy to scale we can make these by the dozens at every wind and solar farm to help
with some of the problems that intermittency poses but what do you guys think do you think
energy Dome and other companies can really bring this to commercial viability and build this at a
scale that would be needed for energy storage problems in the future I'd love to know and if
you're curious about why we need CO2 we can't just use air right it's everywhere it doesn't
have to be filtered or anything else check out this battery video that we made on cryogenic
energy storage next I'm Ricky thanks so much for watching we'll catch you guys next week