
Energy-Storage Startup LightSail Plots Long-Term Game Plan - apsec112
http://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-storage-startup-lightsail-plots-long-term-game-plan-1456110323
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cwal37
I wrote up a little survey[1] of the on-the-ground installed energy storage
landscape nearly 2.5 years ago now (when I was first learning how to make
graphs outside of excel), and really not a whole lot has changed since then in
terms of trends. Pumped storage remains the vast bulk of grid-level storage,
and while we're still not building any new projects, there has been a fair
amount of movement on the permitting front[2] this decade following the
relative drought of the 90s and early 2000s. A few new battery projects have
come online as well.

I feel like I've been reading about LightSail since I wrote that post (which
feels like a lifetime ago, particularly looking at charts made in matlab,
which I probably haven't touched in 2 years), and I hope it really does start
showing up soon at small commercial sites and eventually with grid-level
deployment, deployment of new electrical infrastructure tech is exciting!

[1] [http://btus.us/the-state-of-our-energy-storage/](http://btus.us/the-
state-of-our-energy-storage/)

[2] [http://www.ferc.gov/industries/hydropower/gen-
info/licensing...](http://www.ferc.gov/industries/hydropower/gen-
info/licensing/pump-storage.asp)

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benzofuran
This will be interesting to watch, namely from their approach to maintaining
and servicing the high pressure tanks. The DOT and ASME regulations and codes
governing these are pretty strenuous, and along with the testing requirements
(hydrostatic and visual) for high pressure tanks, the risks of a failure are
massive, and only one is usually enough to tank a supplier from being used by
most larger companies. Good luck to them though! Hopefully they'll sort out
some of the issues with larger pressure tanks in regards to the maintenance
and reliability - I'd love to see some composite 'smart' tanks with strain and
stress measurement built into the pressure vessel, along with some form of
electrical means for measuring tank integrity (corrosion action etc).

edit: they're hiring for a composite tank engineer so there's some hope yet -
although I hope whomever they get understands the issues of composites in
cyclical high pressure service - most of industry shies away from composites
due to their failure mode: most don't fail 'gently' \- a catastrophic failure
is the usual planning mode around composites.

~~~
DaniFong
Our tanks are already ASME certified and have passed the DOT tests. We have a
lot of composites experts integrated in our team already :-)

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gaze
Danielle Fong is a hero.

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mapmap
Summary: they are going to sell high pressure storage tanks for industrial
uses while they work on their compressed air energy storage technology.

