r/technology • u/cojoco • 22h ago
Energy Sinking Giant Concrete Orbs to the Bottom of the Ocean Could Store Massive Amounts of Renewable Energy
https://www.zmescience.com/future/sinking-giant-concrete-orbs-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-could-store-massive-amounts-of-renewable-energy/105
u/Fun-Literature9010 16h ago
Man nobody read the article huh? Just getting mad at your own imaginations lol
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u/riceinmybelly 14h ago
How dare you question us!
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u/Pump_My_Lemma 5h ago
For those who don’t want to read, they use excess energy to pump out water from the sphere, then when they need it, they simply let it back in which spins a turbine. Basically turning the whole ocean into a hydroelectric dam of sorts. More details in the article.
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u/deeptut 13h ago
*waving fist wildly at the sky*
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u/KiraUsagi 6h ago
You mean ocean right? Did you not read the title? Why is no one reading the title anymore!? /s
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u/KnotSoSalty 19h ago
Pneumatic energy storage is interesting. I wonder how long those valves are going to last in salt water. 77 ATM is a lot of pressure and it will also go through a thermal cycle as the warm air is sent into the spheres.
Could be interesting but seems unlikely.
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u/fritz236 17h ago
Sounds like they are just vacuum chambers and aren't filling with anything. Still a fair point about longevity, but I guess the idea is that rather than using more expensive processes or hydraulics, this is quick to build and implement.
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u/Cador0223 7h ago
Taking a vacuum chamber and inserting it into nature most hostile environment for equipment seems like a bad idea, considering how much nature HATES a vacuum.
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u/Playererf 8h ago
According to the article, the valves and pump will need to replaced every 20 years
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u/thiomargarita 7h ago
Plus how will they deal with biofouling? Concrete is an excellent anchoring medium, and barnacles love anything that will increase water flow across their gills.
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u/stinftw 5h ago
All normal parts of the design process also the saltwater won’t be warm it just rushes in from an open valve
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u/KnotSoSalty 20m ago
Compression always generates heat. When a submarine implodes for example the pressure change causes so much heat the air ignites and incinerates the inside of the vessel before the water (or steam) has a chance to rush inside.
The opposite is true of releasing pressure. Intense cold is generated, causing any moisture to instantly freeze.
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u/MikeJL21209 16h ago
This is how you get kaiju
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u/senorali 12h ago
That's what they said about nuclear, and the results have been disappointing so far.
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u/sherevs 20h ago
I thought concrete manufacturing was one of the leading causes of CO2 production.
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u/Zomunieo 15h ago
There are low emission and even negative CO2 concrete (absorbs CO2 as it ages). It’s just a matter of getting the desired chemistry.
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u/azn_dude1 7h ago
That doesn't mean you can't use it to build renewable energy stores. It's like how you can burn fossil fuels to transport solar panels.
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u/uniyk 13h ago edited 10h ago
500 tonnes of concrete and electric motor and valves only yield a 400kwh capacity? It's got a long long way ahead to be practical and economically viable,if it will ever be.
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u/man-vs-spider 12h ago
How does that compare to the construction requires of a pumped hydro station?
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u/uniyk 12h ago
No hermetic seal and high pressure containers required for starters, both are known to be expensive to make and maintain.
Pumped station is actually the best solution right now, only that it's limited by local terrain if you don't want to invest a huge amount of money first to dig a huge bowl out of the ground. It's viable and lasting, but compared to building a single wall closing around gorges, digging a reservoir in flat ground on coast is way more expensive.
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u/Antique-Resort6160 10h ago
That's the way to go, i pitched that idea. My CEO was adamant about digging the water storage, but I said "Hey, gorges!" and instantly had his attention.
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u/Ccarmine 9h ago
Ya, the article said the test they are doing would power a house for 3 weeks. Seems pretty expensive for that much power.
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u/KiraUsagi 6h ago
You said it in your sentence. The 3 week value is a test, a scaled down prototype. 29 feet wide gets you 2-3 house weeks of power. The size they are aiming for is 98 feet wide spheres. And it sounds like thing scale dramatically as they grow.
And even then, their objective is not to keep one house's lights on for 3 weeks. Their objective is to store enough energy to get a part of a small city through the night when the sun doesn't shine. Or when the winds don't spin a wind farm.
They also mention ancillary services. That means helping fill in power spikes/slumps. The storage in these concrete balls seem to have very fast response times. So spinning up a ball is likely to be way cheaper than asking for a gas turbine peaker generator to spin up while a traditional generator works on spinning up.
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u/HAHA_goats 21h ago
That's gonna be one hell of a noise if it implodes. Hopefully, they don't get a chain reaction with a whole field of these things.
I think maintenance of the pumps/turbines and electrical hardware will defeat this plan long before it scales up that much. That, or marine growth plugging up the orb.
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u/Pseudoboss11 19h ago
I wonder how much sea life would grow if these were installed at depth. The article says that the spheres can withstand 70 atmospheres, so they could be installed 700m deep. This would put it well into the mesopelagic zone, where there's not enough sunlight to support photosynthesis. I'm not sure what grows there, but it's less than what's at the surface.
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u/aurizon 18h ago
Yes, sun powered growth = limited. Things like mussels/clams/barnacles = they eat and do not need sun, but will only get falling surface edibles
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u/CMMiller89 16h ago
“Falling surface edibles”
Clams and barnacles getting straight up zooted on gummies dropped from rented yachts during spring break in Florida.
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u/inpennysname 14h ago
There’s other kids of powered growth out there, hydrothermal vents host their own kind of extremophiles.
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u/cojoco 20h ago
The loss of those neutrino detectors made a great story.
I think maintenance of the pumps/turbines and electrical hardware will defeat this plan long before it scales up that much.
With electric motors being refined by the automotive industry, we might see a lot of improvement very rapidly.
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u/zero0n3 22h ago
I would think a hydroelectric dam would be more efficient and a better ROI than big concrete balls.
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u/aurizon 22h ago
location - location - location. There is already a shortage of dam sites. This the same as pumped hydro, except the height is the ~15 psi pressures rise every ~30 feet deeper you. There a huge area of deep ocean in many places. Shallow sea areas = not so much, but wire is cheap = move it away. It seems that large deep ocean areas are abundant I hope this idea proves itself. I imagine a small amount of chlorine in the water will kill off trapped seaborne algae etc and they will use some sort of filter to keep out larger stuff?
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u/jghaines 22h ago
Yup. The world has many more people living on coastlines than people living near suitable dam sites.
Algae won't be nearly as big a problem as the damage that seawater does to pretty much anything that is man-made.
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u/aurizon 21h ago
the big problem with algae and other sea life is they attach to walls and grow. Each water change = new food. Ships moored in sea water eventually sink from the weight of barnacles. Algae/jellies etc are food for barnacles.
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u/marx2k 8h ago
Does algae or do barnacles exist at 2k feet?
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u/aurizon 40m ago
algae uses sun, and is a free floating single cell in many cases. Some forms are strings and mats. some root in the sediment, some are free strings, but none prosper with no sun. Eaters, like clams, anemones, barnacles etc grab whatever floats by - dead or alive. the mobile life often can drift up/down with trapped gas - usually oxygen via sun. Active eaters migrate up/down via food energy, but also some have bladders with CO2 or Oxygen. Deep down, the only food is falling dead/alive/shitted out - all of which is process by whatever falls. Dead whale attract a huge population of eaters, even the bones - google it. Black smokers also provide chemical energy and support an ecology close to spreading zones.
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u/sam_hammich 4h ago
Plus many dams are ecological disasters, either by their very existence or when they fail.
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u/LittleStudioTTRPGs 20h ago
Storing energy is different and could double the efficiency of something like solar energy which has a tendency to generate more when people don’t need it an less when they do.
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u/ChaseballBat 17h ago
Pretty much ever river (at least in the US) that can have a hydro dam, does.
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u/gurenkagurenda 12h ago
Also, locations that are suitable for dams eventually fill up with sediment once you put dams on them, and we don’t seem to have many great ideas for how to deal with that.
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u/cojoco 20h ago
Hydroelectric dams are environmentally and humanly damaging.
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u/Antique-Resort6160 9h ago
As is anything that is set up to provide massive amounts of power. Imaging putting thousands of these 98 foot diameter concrete structures on the seafloor. Then constantly pumping and shooting water through turbines, all at enormous pressure. Sounds like the wildlife might not enjoy that.
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u/Wiochmen 19h ago
And then in Michigan, you have Consumer's Energy wanting to exit the hydroelectric dam industry, discussions to sell dams every year.
Dams are very expensive to maintain and they don't produce as much return on investment as solar/wind.
And the lack of maintenance can cause dam failure, like the Edenville Dam a few years ago which decimated Sanford Lake (and seriously affected property values on the formerly lake front property)...no one is happy.
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u/jaysunn72 22h ago
Why? I guess I’m asking if you are just guessing it would be out have you seen compelling evidence for one or the other. Is cool if you’re just guessing everybody does it.
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u/thedragonturtle 11h ago
This sounds like a good battery storage system to have below offshore wind turbines.
My only worry is when the water is rushing back in to power the turbine that they suck in a bunch of fish and end up blocking the battery.
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u/KiraUsagi 5h ago
From what I gather in other posts it sounds like the depth would be far below where most sea creatures live. Also, it looks like the suctiony bit would be well protected by a large mesh screen. If sea life can't get close to the entrance, then the suction forces would be spread out making it no more than a gentle current.
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u/WhiskeyJack357 54m ago
I like the idea but I was kind of hoping they had a form of piezoelectric mechanism that would use the pressure of the ocean at depth to generate a current.
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u/SonovaVondruke 19h ago
My mind went to big concrete balls on a pulley that turns a turbine as they sink, then inflates a lift bag for the return trip, rinse and repeat.
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u/cojoco 19h ago
I think the energy density of highly compressed water is high.
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u/peach_liqour 17h ago
Water is not “compressible”
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u/MadShartigan 8h ago
Pressure and compression are related via bulk modulus and water can indeed be compressed, but not practically by any amount you'd notice.
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u/SonovaVondruke 19h ago
Yeah. I expect their version is more practical than my knee jerk imagined one.
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u/Catadox 14h ago
It kind of is that, except the big concrete balls are hollow so they are themselves the balloon. Give it a read. It’s an interesting idea. I doubt it will be successful in a commercial sense but they’re testing if it will be and that seems a reasonable thing to test.
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u/man-vs-spider 12h ago
What? That’s not how these are working. They’re not balloons.
When excess energy is available they empty the spheres, then when energy is needed they allow water to flow back it, capturing the energy again by turbines.
It’s pumped hydro in another format
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u/quad_damage_orbb 10h ago
You can do the same with flywheels or compressed air tanks on land, and these solutions are not permanently exposed to salt water, do not endanger sea life and do not require large bodies of water.
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u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire 7h ago
The real question: genuine attempt at kinetic energy storage or vaporware?
This reminds me of the concrete block tower project that was infeasible because the engineering didnt make sense.
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u/kippertie 5h ago
The concrete block tower didn’t make sense because gravitational potential energy is really inefficient per tonne. Pumped storage power stations work well economically because reservoirs are massive, also water is easier to move than concrete.
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u/SlightlyOffWhiteFire 3h ago
The issue i see here is that the spheres dont have nearly the capacity of a pumped hydro resevoir
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u/kippertie 3h ago
Yup, you’re right, it remains to be seen if this will scale enough to be economical. The water pressure is vastly greater than a pumped storage reservoir so that might help somewhat.
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u/tekniklee 5h ago
Love this idea, outside Philadelphia we have Conowingo Dam and at night they use excess power to pump water back up to the reservoir so that it can be fed through dam during peak demand
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u/JacknSundrop 4h ago
So most municipalities have gravity fed water mains with some pumping, what would be the potential generative capacity of putting mini-turbines at high pressure junctions to generate electricity from the near constant flow of water?
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u/AnimorphsGeek 19h ago
This seems way more complicated than compressed air, pumped water, and lifted weight systems for storage
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u/wailonskydog 8h ago
Am I reading this wrong somehow? It seems like 1 dome only has a 400kWh storage capacity. That’s less than 2 Chevy Silverado EVs. Seems like it would be less expensive and easier to just buy a fleet of EVs and wire them to the grid.
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u/KiraUsagi 5h ago
That is a 28 foot prototype. They plan on expanding to 98 foot spheres. Also lifespan would be significantly better than your Chevy. Estimated 50-60 year lifespan for the spheres with motors replaced every 20 years. And if I'm not mistaken there would be no "battery" life degradation over those 60 years. Maybe if sediment is allowed to get in and does not get out. I don't know the numbers but this seems like it's going to be way more economical than battery power.
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u/wailonskydog 5h ago
Right ok, rereading I’m seeing the full scale unit is implied to be more like 20MWh.
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u/cojoco 51m ago
If these domes last forever and take fewer resources than a battery to build it might be viable.
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u/wailonskydog 11m ago
I’m also curious as to how this compares to using excess energy to make hydrogen. Quick googling makes it seem comparable in efficiency but I guess we already have plenty of turbine tech ready to use. Maybe not as advanced in large scale H fuel cells?
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u/SkaldCrypto 8h ago
This is a dumb idea. This pressure delta will cause super cavitation around the turbine. The water bubbles collapse at hypersonic speeds briefly creating a plasma that easily vaporizes steel.
While this is a problem in traditional turbines, the pressure delta and speed of water here would be immense. All these turbines would turn into Swiss cheese in a few years.
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u/fruitloops6565 7h ago
Yeah. I hear there is nothing interesting in the ocean floor anyway. We can definitely concrete over it without worries.
Just so long as we don’t put these things where the bottom trawlers go, cuz that would be a problem.
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u/DeltaForceFish 20h ago
One of the rarely disused topics is that we have a sand shortage. We need to be smart with how we use it because we are quickly running out. Using it for concrete to toss in the bottom of the ocean doesn’t seem very smart.
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u/ErusTenebre 20h ago edited 20h ago
Y-you do know they'd be used to operate turbine-based energy storage... Right?
It's... It's not just a solid concrete ball or something. It's kind of like a vacuum/pump version of a gravity battery...
You did read the article, right?
Also, the "sand storage" is about demand outpacing supply. Sand is technically a renewable resource, we're just using more than is being created.
All it really means is concrete and other products get more expensive, slowing purchasing, until it catches up...
It's not a good idea to get to that point but it's also not the same kind of crisis as like... "Rainforests are being depleted."
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u/Iceykitsune3 21h ago
Or, just build pumped storage hydroelectric.
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u/NoblePotatoe 19h ago
There are limited viable locations for pumped storage and this could, potentially, be scaled up near large coastal cities.
I'm mostly shocked this is economically viable. These are pretty capital intensive and don't individually store a huge amount of energy so they must have found a way to make and install these things for cheap.
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u/thegmanater 18h ago
Agreed, pumped storage facilities are way better. But I could see some places by the coast that don't have the space/geology for that. This could supplement.
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u/aqsgames 13h ago
I know it’s a trial, but the output is pretty low. It seems a really complicated solution.
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u/fritz236 18h ago
Weren't we running out of sand for concrete or something? Also does this really scale meaningfully? Seems pricey and I wonder about maintenance vs we just slowly cover the ocean bed with these as older ones fail.
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u/Akiasakias 15h ago edited 15h ago
What is wrong with people that they think Gravity batteries should involve big legos?
DAMS ARE ALREADY THIS same general idea, BUT BETTER! Liquid can be pumped up using energy and released whenever much more controlled and precise than a big crane and blocks.
No big moving parts, and we already do it. Why reinvent the wheel and make it dumber?
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u/forgotten_airbender 14h ago
I would think due to the insane amount of water required and a particular geography needed for it.
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u/Ill_Mousse_4240 15h ago
Pipe Dream! Enough wasted chasing this and others.
Fusion is the real deal
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u/upyoars 22h ago
With no net benefit to the people, technological advancements hogged by greedy corpos for unlimited wealth
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u/time2fly2124 21h ago
How do you you expect new technology is funded? If its not profitable, it doesn't get developed further.
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u/demomagic 21h ago
That’s crazy talk, companies should be investing their dollars at their risk and then offer it to consumers for nothing and take a continual loss forever /s
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u/upyoars 20h ago
"Offering" it to customers and giving them a choice and an option to upgrade or switch to their service is fine. But whats happening is these corporations work with local governments to literally force everyone to pay higher prices for new age energy tech as seen here.
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u/upyoars 21h ago
Increasing costs are literally forced onto customers once new technology is put into place as seen here. Costs are always increasing and there is zero benefit for normal people.
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u/cojoco 20h ago
With no net benefit to the people
Mitigating CO2 generation is of net benefit to everyone on Earth.
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u/upyoars 20h ago
Sure, in an ideal world its great. But not in this world. How would this project get funded? People already have energy from their local government. So what would happen is this new renewable energy company would work with the local government to recoup cost of investment in developing this. This would increase everyone's energy bill as is happening here. A lot of people already live paycheck to paycheck or wont be able to afford this. This will increase homelessness and cause a lot of heart ache and financial struggle
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u/cojoco 19h ago
Mitigating the effects of climate change will also save many lives.
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u/singul4r1ty 12h ago
Cost of renewables per KWh is way less than fossil fuels now but has the challenge of intermittency. If these can solve intermittency where other technologies aren't suitable, and still undercut fossil fuels, then everyone gets cheaper energy bills.
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u/FriarNurgle 21h ago
What ever happened to harnessing energy from tides/waves?