I love how you took the criticism of just hyping up fly-by-night ventures, and actually started going through your back-catalog to do follow-up videos.

The fact that workers in oil and gas industry will be able to easily transfer to this industry is why i think it's a winner. Almost all equipment is off the shelf and supply chains in place. And you have a ready set of trained workers with transferable skills.

I love the revisit / update series. Its cool and all the new things you talk about but hardly any media revisit things and then you have no idea if any actually follow through on what they say or get off the ground. Keep it up!

Liquid air energy storage seems really underrated. Once you've built the charging and discharging plants, you can simply add more insulated tanks to increase energy storage capacity. Even with flow batteries, you'd have to process additional electrolyte solution to increase capacity; liquid air beats almost every other material in how easy it is to increase capacity. Just add a tank and liquefy the air all around us! You also have the added bonus of absorbing many useful gases in the process. You could capture nitrogen, oxygen, and argon via liquefaction. Using fractional distillation, you could separate these and sell them for a profit. You could even liquefy and capture CO2 (albeit it would be a pretty small volume). It would probably be cheaper than other carbon capture concepts as most of the energy would be spent liquefying the nitrogen and oxygen which would be used for energy storage. Liquid CO2 would be a small byproduct that you could filter out and capture. I also see serious potential for combined cooling, heating, and power which few other energy storage systems truly offer. For example, you could use some of the cold energy to refrigerate agricultural and pharmaceutical products or you could use the waste heat produced via compression to carry out desalination. You could make efficient use of cryogenic energy for other technologies and processes that go beyond just generating electricity. You could kill several birds with 1 stone (large energy storage with easily added capacity, air separation, carbon capture, combined cooling heating and power, etc...). The achilles heel of this concept is the liquefaction plant itself which is large and complex, making it expensive. If someone found a way to efficiently liquefy air in a smaller and less complicated set-up (maybe magnetic refrigeration or a thermoacoustic heat pump?) this would be the holy grail of energy storage.

Excellent! This is a thoroughly plausible energy storage method. Make it so!

Simple mechanics and thermodynamics. And scaleable in any respect. GO FOR IT! 👍👍👍

No doubt along with thousands of others, I was waiting for an update of your earlier video of cold air storage. I'm delighted that this one seems to actually be feasible and about to happen 👍 More please.

Yes! Yes! Yes! This is the best energy storage solution that I've seen. There is no new tech, and it can be built to whichever scale is necessary. I can't wait to see this flower blossom!

Your content always makes my Sunday evening more positive. Thanks!

I like to remind folk who react with negative comment and question to evolving technologies etc. of the adage: "People who say that something can not be done should get out of the way of those who are in the process of doing it." Many of the comments and questions which appear below your presentations fit into that mantra rather nicely.

Ive long believed that intermittent energy sources (solar, wind) are not replacements for the coal-fired power plant, but for the coal mine. This isn't a metaphor I hear talked about frequently, but this technology really drives it home.

Thanks 🙏 so much for the update! I am intrigued by the removal of CO2 as a byproduct of this process. Seems like a much more economical way to remove it. Yes, keep us informed on the Manchester facility.

As an air separation unit operator, its definitely an interesting idea! Another upside is that extra liquid can be sold off, as liquid air gasses are very commonly used in industry. One issue I see though, is that you can't just turn an ASU on at the flick of a switch. Our plant is usually around 6-8 hours from first start to producing usable liquid (assuming there are no issues). Our plant is also over 40 years old, so modern plants may be better suited to quick start up and shut downs.

A big thumbs up to Highview Power. Lovely to see something this useful coming out of Manchester,England.

Dave, Northern Powerhouse, love it!

I will just write what others wrote - I love that you started this series of re-visiting the projects you talked about. Excited to hear about energy storage projects!

Thanks Dave! _"We'll just use more Lithim batteries"..._ was never a solution for mass scale grid storage. Inividuals yes, mobile uses sure. But not for grid scale. So it's fantastic having attention put towards these projects, and a channel covering technologies that aren't being sold to you as personal consumer advertizing.

There is a Highview plant in Vermont, USA. Green Mountain Energy.

3 energy storage solutions I'd like you to explore please: 1. Home Biogas Production for self sufficiency. (gas, heating, electricity, vehicle fuel, energy storage and production) 2. Iron Batteries (Iron and sea water apparently? huge containers) 3. Ambri Molten Salt Batteries. I'd be fascinated to explore these as home solutions and grid where possible

I really like these update videos. It is nice to see if the ideas have panned out. Each storage idea that passes basic viability should be tried. Having multiple types of production and storage makes the system more resilient than having a single source.

Thank you for this update, I've been following this company for a while and it's encouraging to hear this progress and how it compares to other technologies in this field. This is something I would love to see around Scotland in community-owned wind/tide systems as part of a network of distributed generation and storage system that would empower and provide good careers in many communities ... unlikely at present as our governments (Scot and UK) have sold our assets and resources for giveaway prices and failed to learn from Norway and other countries in how to ensure the profits from these stay mostly in country and for the common good.. but that's another topic!! Great videos, thank you..

This is the one of you're review video's I was most looking forward to. I see this as one of the most valuable energy storage methods as it can also be used to extract carbon dioxide simultaneously. You get a 2 for.

Both cryogenic air storage and compressed air storage are particularly attractive technologies as shown in Dave's video here due to the capacities that can be realised AND due to the fact they are used to drive rotating machines - in other words, synchronous machines. This could make them a critical part of any black-start response, just as pumped hydro already is, without the complexities and cost of large grid-forming inverters. Also, the use of rotating machines inherently adds to system inertia.

Another fantastic video Dave. Looking forward to you gaining 1 million subscribers !

I appreciate that you highlight that utilities always want a broad portfolio of generation options. These options will have very different cost points, and other advantages and disadvantages. Meaning that even solutions that don't look all that great by comparison may find a niche in the portfolio.

I remember the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. It was kind of the opposite temperature wise. They melted salt from which the heat would be used for about 12 hours to generate electricity, 'on demand'. It looked great on paper. However, in practice, the maintenance proved to be quite expensive. There were many pump failures, tank failures, and the super heater failures. When working with large temperature deltas and many moving parts, there are a lot of things which can fail and cost more money than anticipated. Hopefully, lessons were learned and this new project will work effectively.

I don't know if you will see this comment, but I may have a good topic for a video: Oceanic Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). Seems like a geothermal, but using temperature difference between surface and deep water in the ocean/seas. They are going to test it in Canary Islands. It may be worth a thought!

Among all the new kind of energy storage solutions that I had heard over the years, the cryogenic air system sounded most promising to me back in 2020s when I first heard about it, which is why I mentioned it in one of my own videos, which I never do for any unproven tech. This ticks most checkboxes when it comes to technical, economical, ecological and logistical feasibility. The best part is it uses not just existing technologies from other industries, but also use the exact same parts and equipment from them, not to mention, it would be location independent, no external raw material(either continuous or one time) would be needed except for air which is free and omnipresent on earth, also, I loved how they made it so circular and closed loop. which is why I was mostly confident that this will succeed and may even become one of the major energy solutions in the next decade.

Appreciate the comparative updates to expand the context.

This is exactly what these types of channels should be doing, so thank you for revisiting these topics. It makes this channel feel like I'm actually learning about the future, and not just consuming techno-optimistic tales for escapism. Please keep em coming!

Loving this revisit series.....thanks Dave!

Sounds like a winner. Thanks for the follow up.

Using thermodynamics to advantage is a good plan. Makes me want to get the shovel out and start building one in my backyard.

As an engineer I am concerned about the losses incurred in using any "thermodynamic process" as a first step to store energy. The electrical energy that is used is what we call "purely available" or work-equivalent energy. Any process that produces liquid air by current methods only provides ~ 33% yield insofar as removing the real and latent heat to do so. The capture of the waste heat had therefore be better good in order help compensate for this relatively bad performance relative to batteries, which stand at around 90% efficiency of return. At this point I would only consider adopting this approach only if there were strong incentives to make heat rather than to electrically power something later. best regards DKB

That 60% efficiency is a stretch and it’s very maintenance intensive, note the manpower required for operation. In comparison pumped hydro has a 100 year lifespan with almost no maintenance, and then refurbish the turbo pump/generators, and good for another century.

Most interesting. Looking forward to the follow-up.

I love these follow up videos. Reviewing some failures would also be extremely informative.

I can't believe that Highview liquid compressed air vid was four years ago - ffar out. As blown away as I was at the time, there was another vid that you did after that based on compressed CO2 that impressed me more. Whatever happens though, for these project to proceed Brian and Kevin from accounts must be kept happy LOL. It is great to see this project getting up I must say.

Thanks Dave. Those facilities in NT which you mentioned are geared for producing that rated power for 12 hours. Clearly, at lower loads they should be able to run for a day or longer. This provides an excellent buffer for those relatively rare occasions when the Sun doesn't shine after a night with no wind. Sure, the overall efficiency is only about 60%, mostly because of the work which has to be done in cooling and heating the gases, but other losses can be minimised through experience. And 60% is better than the inefficiencies incurred in needing to install even larger over-capacity electricity generators which include fossil-fuel burning power stations.

Thank you for all your work in informing the public. And me.

Thanks so much for your refreshingly thorough and balanced research and presentations. My friends and I look forward to every video.

Dude. I'm pretty sure we see things differently, but i really like you and your style...

Awesome stuff! This is such great news. We need solutions like this

The company (Highview Power) canceled it's Vermont project back in June 2022. I didn't realize that. Meanwhile, the power company in Vermont (Green Mountain Power) has 50 WM of power in VPP (virtual power plant) that started with the Tesla Powerwall program (in 2020). The power company has saved over $3 Million in the past few years.

Great NEWS ! Actually real world happening Grid storage !!! love it , thx for brightening up my day !

One of the most coherent, simple and solid and genuinely renewable solutions that you have presented. Scaleable and not dependant on topography etc.

Great video as usual 👌

Looks great! Similarly would love a checkin on Energy Dome. Started about the same time, but has already crearted a 5MW demonstrator plant. . Is now breaking ground on a 20MW/200MWh full scale facility. I like it cause working with CO2 seems much simpler than dealing with all the different gasses in air. Would love to see your take!

Thanks for another great video! Cryogenic air energy storage certainly has some advantages: building the plant from existing components is a big deal. That immediately makes this technology more feasible than others that require lots of new designs and testing. And as you said, it makes upgrades and replacements much easier and less expensive. Plus there's the lack of any dangerous or expensive materials. If one of these plants leak it's just going to spill liquid air. It can't catch on fire or spread contaminants around, and you wouldn't need to evacuate the neighborhood. On the minus side it's only sixty percent efficient. That raises the price of the power it's storing, but as you showed on that chart (excellent way to summarize the information, btw) the main competitors are "Hydrogen and Fuel Cells" and "Compressed Air," where hydrogen has obvious disadvantages , fuel cells are (I think) still very experimental at this size, and compressed air has a similar efficiency to cryogenic air. Pumped hydro has them all beat, but that's massively expensive to build, and there's only so many places to put those facilities.

I was hoping to hear about the air storage project being constructed in one mine caverns in Broken Hill too. But, then I realised it's using compressed air.

Top drawer graphics, easy to understand explanations and great delivery as ever Dave..not to mention an empathy with Project Managers which can only be based on experience. 😊

Great move to review topics you discussed in the past to see how well they've performed years later.

A true breath of fresh air!

Love ya work man.

Hyview's technology can be scaled up in energy capacity by relatively low cost increasing the size of the associated crogenic tank farm. Round trip efficiency of 60% is better than when I visited them, but still a significant handicap that restricts the economic use cases. Over the same period, lithium ion battery costs have coninued to reduce down to just over $50/kWh. I wish them success

Cryogenic air storage is a definite improvement on just compressed air systems, and it does have the advantage of using industrial standard components, but I can see 2 problems with this idea. Firstly, the round-trip efficiency figures you quoted do not seem that efficient, liquifying air needs a lot of energy, and while some of the heating and cooling can be captured and stored to be reused in the process, for each stage in the process you lose a percentage of the energy you are trying to store, which need not be a big problem as long as the energy being stored comes from renewable sources, it just requires 50% more wind turbines to be built. The second problem is that liquefied air has no other uses, if however spare renewable energy where to be used in electrolysers to produce Hydrogen, which could be stored in a compressed or liquefied state for days, weeks or even months, later to be converted back into electricity by being burned in converted gas peaker plants or more efficiently if more expensively in fuel cell systems. While again you lose a percentage of the energy you are trying to store on each side of the process, the round-trip efficiency should be no worse than a cryogenic air system, plus Hydrogen has the potential to power ships, aeroplanes, heavy vehicle, basically anything Where a battery or cable would not be appropriate. There is another compressed gas system you might want to keep an eye on, this one uses carbon dioxide in a closed loop system ready to be compressed and then returned to atmospheric pressure, again it uses industry standard components and has a claimed higher round-trip efficiency, it only disadvantage is that for most of the time the carbon dioxide is stored at atmospheric pressure in a huge bladder/dome the size of a couple of football fields named energy dome it claimed to have full scale working system running in 2024 aimed at the 6 hour market in grid scale systems and cheaper than lithium-ion batteries. Finally, it is nice to hear someone admit that lithium-ion batteries are only good for 6 hours In a grid scale system, and while you install extra rows of batteries to kick in one after another to supply electricity for days or weeks, the cost would be enormous, pushing electricity prices to a point where people would be clamouring for the return of coal.

At last, something real is happening ! Thank you - very enjoyable.

One other advantage I see is that liquid air storage could be located in deserts where land is cheap and solar makes the most sense. Thus excess electricity could be stored on site with little to no loss due to long transmission lines. The air is also already dry making it easier to liquefy.

Your review of the numerous examples of battery vapour ware has been interesting !🤭

As @trueriver1950 asked: fractional distillation will be very easy for CO2 (option to remove that in the process) and the noble gases (Ar/Kr/Xe).

Bravo! Keep up the faith!

I love these follow ups It feels like there's always something new just around the corner but rarely coming into reality, these put the lab science into planning reality Love it

Can't believe I've been watching this channel for all this time, I've been just waiting for an update about liquid air battery

One of the most interesting things about this to me is that this is stuff the fossil fuels industry understands. They have a lot of the equipment already as well. This is something they could pivot to pretty easily and ensure profits going into the future. Which would give them an incentive to move into the modern era with all the other industries, instead of worrying about becoming redundant. I really hope they look into this and grab the opportunity to stay relevant and make money.

Good information! Thank you for doing the heavy lifting

Cool you are presenting this. Really is the best solution for both intra-day and inter-day storage I think, including the perhaps ironic propane or CO2 compression/decompression options.

Super interesting thank you 😊❤

Be interesting to see it in practice. Cooling the air and liquefying it will release latent heat, which they also store, though I guess some will be lost at the time and over time in storage. Then when power output is required the liquid is pumped to high pressure before being vaporised back to gas where the stored heat is needed, plus some from the atmosphere - that bit may be difficult with the heat exchangers getting iced up. Interesting concept though that this can take low grade heat from the atmosphere to vaporise the liquid. Bit like a heat pump!

I wonder if fractional distillation producing oxygen as a by product would improve the economics? While chilling down the nitrogen why not separate out the oxygen (which at standard pressure condenses first)?

Great update 👍😃

This is a fascinating technology and great video

Air is a primarily mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and argon which have different boiling points. To keep nitrogen liquid requires a pressure of 390 KPa which is a lot of pressure. The alternative is storing it in a Dewar flask with some being let boil off to maintain the low temperature (-147C) of the rest. It seems someone has already built a vehicle that used liquid air to power it. The idea has merit and maybe as a side hustle they could extract the argon as that's quite valuable. I can see why the authorities would be concerned though. We already have the technology to do this however storing liquid nitrogen does have risks and of course over time losses.

Thank you!

They should build two 200MW/250GWH liquid air installations on the Isle of Grain, Kent, on the site of the two demolished fossil fuel power stations (Grain and Kingsnorth). It would be ideal to store the offshore wind turbine energy generated along the north Kent coast (Isle of Sheppey, Thanet and Kentish Flats), along with the Uk's largest solar PV farm, currently being constructed at Cleve Hill near Faversham. It would silence the nimbys who don't want lithium battery storage at Cleve Hill, make use of the existing grid high voltage network, end curtailment and provide ideal peak demand energy. It would also go a long way to addressing those winter dunkelflauten days. And if it's successful, just keep adding more storage along with renewable wind and solar. God, this is a no-brainer.

The comparision to thermal storage solutions which are already being build, is missing. And a big thank, i learned of thsi method nearly 20 years ago and now there are site being build. Nice. 1 GW lithium battery storage site. This is a new order of magnitude.

Well done, UK. I can see the attraction in Denmark and other low topography countries. The more locally-tailored systems, the merrier.

60% efficiency is very impressive! This seems like something that could actually hit the market quickly.

You mentioned that they are putting in electrolyzers at the Manchester site which adds an intriguing posible option. Also set up an ammonia plant which would get the hydrogen from the electrolyzers and nitrogen from distilling some of the liquified air. The Haber process for making the ammonia is exothermic which could be used to boost the efficiency of the LAES plant and make up for the liquefied air used to produce nitrogen. Ammonia is a lot easier to store and transport than hydrogen and the equipment to do so is off the shelf.

Thanks for posting this, I was wondering how Highview power was going. The concept looked very promising.

Well, that is good news. Where would you say those Finish sand/silo energy storage systems land on that graph?

I love that you are revisiting earlier energy storage schemes. Cryogenic air has a lot going for it. But it probably isn't scalable down to household level. What about compressed air storage which is scalable downwards. How is it progressing? I remember thinking, "I want one in my backyard". Love your vids and the clarity and the objectivity. If something is doubtful you say so.

60% round trip energy is a lot better than 0%. Let's build this out quickly and large scale and stop wasting excess renewable energy

Thanks for the update Dave, good to hear how they're doing. In my old job I did the Ashden Awards judging visit to their head office in London and prototype site in Manchester back in 2019. I think it's a great storage technology, a shame it's taking so long to get the sites built.

Capturing the heat of compression is a bit interesting. I work for one of those OEMs. Our compressors shut down at 300ish degrees to keep from destroying themselves. That's not a lot of heat.

what is funn is that renewables are starting to get so cheap, that incredibly inneficient but cheap energy storage options become more viable. energy loses don't matter so much when your energy is almost free.

The typical energy return from ln2 is about 100 watts per kilo (from Wikipedia, ln2 powered car ) as opposed to 1,200 watts from a kilo of petrol . I worked in the cryogenics industry for 39 years and the high cost of vessel manufacture vaccum systems and vaccuum pumps mass spectrometers to test weld quality and system integrity , make it impractical on a cost to energy basis .

We order 5 units!! Seriously, this is solid excellent news !!

Hi Dave. Did you make a video about Hysata electrolyzer? I couldn't find it. Maybe interesting to cover.

great news, thank you! LAES has a bright future and it is a practicable way to go!

The big thing going for this project is the Carnot efficiency is really good for the energy recovery part. It also should not be underestimated how many companies used cold storage/chilling in part or all of their manufacturing process. Similar installations to this can be used in place of refrigeration installations with the added benefit of co-generation, and no need to convert back to electricity to run the cold storage - think of all those supermarket and Mall air conditioners that could be replaced with a chiller/electricity co-generation concept.

Thank you. Impressive investments. Reported very early years ago here:)

Thanks Dave. That is the first I have heard of the Australian ventures. I will try to have a look at Owen Springs next time I'm in Alice Springs. I hope London goes well. Wish I could be there.

Love these revisits, although FOUR YEARS since I watched the original. This sounds absolutely incredible in its potential. They are fast running out of excuses, why 'It'll never work'.

Sounds perfect on several dimensions. Supply chain and workforce can be reassigned from fossil fuel industry so already doable quickly and at scale. Efficiency is also pretty decent, and the resource air is there and nontoxic unlike batteries.

I wonder if this would be a good system for hospitals, particularly in small to medium sized towns. - grid failure protection - supply of liquid oxygen and nitrogen that they currently have to truck in. - stored heat for space heating, hot water and laundry - stored cold for air conditioning - using the heat and cold directly would be more efficient than converting back to electricity for separate electrically powered thermal devices. - charge with on-site solar and local solar and wind farms - could be scaled to integrate with a town's power grid.

Stacking functions would be great: air separation + liquid air storage

High View's approach is so exciting. It'll be great to see a turbine actually start drawing from wind turbines

60 percent round trip, plus possibly to piggyback co-located air distillation production with shared efficiencies, plus a means of extracting a teeny bit of carbon to be incorporated in greenwash... Every little bit helps. This is a winner.

I remember this one and liked it a lot as well a similar one that used Co2 in the same way but it was a closed loop so no Co2 ever entered the atmosphere from it. It had the same benefits with scale up and using known and current technologies..

Hi Dave, Great video as always, keep up to good work. Did you do a video a while ago that was a very similar idea but using CO2, by a Spanish company I want to say, I believe the process was almost the same but they had like a great big tent for the ambient side, and again look very promising but be great to see where it is up to now.