
The Underground Wind Bulbs of Utah - icebraining
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-underground-wind-bulbs-of-utah.html
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ableal
The bit about the Antarctic water "bulb" mining and subsequent sewage dumping
to fill the hollow reminded me of a bit of fiction:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_7_%28novel%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_7_%28novel%29)
\- not mentioned in the wiki is the part where the underground reservoir for
supplies has a moving partition, the other side of which is being filled with
sewage.

Ah, cautionary tales ...

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kijin
What if there's a leak in the salt mine?

I mean, a salt mine is just a large hole in the ground. What assurance do we
have that it doesn't have any hairline cracks through which compressed air can
escape?

And if the air does begin to escape and erode the surrounding rock, how do you
prevent a massive explosion occurring at some point? Is the weight of the rock
above the cavern enough to keep the air compressed at 1100 psi?

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jewel
My favorite method of short-term energy storage at scale is to use excess
energy during non-peak times to pump water uphill, back into a reservoir. The
topology has to be right for it (and obviously it requires there to be plenty
of excess water), but it's a simple method to smooth out peak demand.

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ableal
It gets expensive, in direct and environmental costs, when you end up building
additional small dams just for that.

Around here those costs were quietly palmed off on consumers, while the
virtues of wind power were being sung.

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pacaro
Wikipedia has rather more information on this, including (in the History
section) a bunch of examples of this at scale going back to the 70s

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage)

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gscott
Seems like if there is a salt mine they could make some sort of battery out of
the salt.

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teddyh
If that were possible, couldn’t you do the same thing to _the entire ocean_?

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ch4s3
This is pretty neat. I wonder how cost effective it is vs compressed fluid
storage.

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ams6110
If by fluid you mean liquid, liquids don't compress.

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civilian
Well, they do compress, just not enough to bother to store energy into them.
(Sorry, I gotta nitpick the nitpickers.)

