Storing elctricity as steam ?

Capt'n Midnight

Brainstorming so may not be practical

Apart from renewables almost all mains electricity is made from steam. So why store the electicity when you can store steam / heat in the boiler, the main advantage is that you miss out the inneficiencies of converting to and form an alternative energy source and you can handle more variance in the production of heat too.

Power plants are large so surface to volume ratio should be vry good. Storage doesn't have to be for more than a few hours, and it was done on small submarines back in 1879*

Not too sure on the efficiencies here and usually used at low pressure but with mechanical vapour recompression you could use surplus electiricity to "regenerate" the steam, maybe even on a minute by minute basis. you could use a flywheel to store a few minutes electricity.


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurgam (1879 )

Resurgam II, was more easily compared with a modern submarine. It was 40 ft (12 m) long, 9 ft (3 m) in diameter and weighed 30 tons. It was powered by a steam engine with an underwater duration of 4 hours under power.

fluffyduffy

I think you might find that all of your steam turns to water quite quickly.

That is what happens to mine anyway!