WEBVTT - How does large-scale power storage work?

0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:03.160
<v Speaker 1>Stuff happens, just don't let it happen to your photos, music,

0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:06.600
<v Speaker 1>and documents. Protect your important files with Mosey by e

0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:09.840
<v Speaker 1>m C, the most trusted name and cloud backup. Save

0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:12.920
<v Speaker 1>ten percent today with promo code brain Stuff at mosey

0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.959
<v Speaker 1>dot com. That's m o z Y dot com. Welcome

0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.840
<v Speaker 1>to brain Stuff from how Stuff works dot com where

0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:30.800
<v Speaker 1>smart happens. I am Marshall Brain with today's question, what

0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.880
<v Speaker 1>are all the different ways to store energy? Besides using

0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.800
<v Speaker 1>rechargeable batteries. Human beings have been looking for a good

0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.479
<v Speaker 1>way to store energy for a long time. One of

0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:44.159
<v Speaker 1>the big things that's been holding up electric cars is

0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:48.280
<v Speaker 1>battery technology. When you compare batteries to gasoline, the differences

0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:51.800
<v Speaker 1>are huge. For example, a typical electric car might carry

0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:55.440
<v Speaker 1>a thousand pounds of lead acid batteries. Those batteries take

0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.280
<v Speaker 1>several hours to recharge, and they might give the car

0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:01.760
<v Speaker 1>a hundred mile range. Two or three gallons of gasoline

0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:05.039
<v Speaker 1>give the same range. Weigh less than thirty pounds, and

0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:07.520
<v Speaker 1>you can pump that much gasoline in about a minute.

0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:11.959
<v Speaker 1>There's really no comparison between gasoline and batteries. Here's a

0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:15.120
<v Speaker 1>list of some of the other technologies that people commonly

0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:18.479
<v Speaker 1>use to store energy. Some of these working electric car

0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:22.760
<v Speaker 1>while others are better off for stationary applications. One of

0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.080
<v Speaker 1>the oldest techniques people have used is the falling weight.

0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:28.600
<v Speaker 1>You lift the weight to store the energy in it,

0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.199
<v Speaker 1>and then you let the weight fall to extract the energy.

0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:35.600
<v Speaker 1>Many grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks use this technique. By

0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:38.520
<v Speaker 1>running the string attached to the weights through a gear train,

0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.080
<v Speaker 1>you can use a heavy weight and let it fall

0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:44.240
<v Speaker 1>over a long period of time. This approach doesn't work

0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:47.160
<v Speaker 1>very well in an electric car, but it's worked well

0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:51.000
<v Speaker 1>in clocks for hundreds of years. Many power plants use

0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:54.080
<v Speaker 1>the falling weight approach in the form of water. The

0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:57.200
<v Speaker 1>water is pumped uphill to a lake at night when

0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.640
<v Speaker 1>the power plant has excess capacity, and then during high

0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.880
<v Speaker 1>demand daytime periods, the water runs through a termite on

0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:06.960
<v Speaker 1>its way downhill to a lower lake. Another way to

0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:11.519
<v Speaker 1>store energy is in some form of repeatable mechanical deformation.

0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.480
<v Speaker 1>This is the idea behind a spring used in a

0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:16.760
<v Speaker 1>wind up clock or a rubber band used in a

0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:20.120
<v Speaker 1>wind up airplane. You store the energy by deforming the

0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:24.040
<v Speaker 1>material in the spring and the material releases that energy

0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.280
<v Speaker 1>as it returns to its original shape. At the scale

0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.120
<v Speaker 1>of a car, this technology has problems because of the

0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:32.840
<v Speaker 1>weight of the spring, but it's smaller scales like a

0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.280
<v Speaker 1>wrist watch, it works great. Nature has been storing energy

0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.120
<v Speaker 1>for a long time, and if you want to think

0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:41.200
<v Speaker 1>about it this way, gasoline is really a form of

0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:45.079
<v Speaker 1>stored natural energy. Plants absorbed sunlight and turn it into

0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.440
<v Speaker 1>carbohydrates over millions of years, those carbohydrates can turn into

0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.080
<v Speaker 1>oil or coal, and that's a form of stored energy.

0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:55.240
<v Speaker 1>On a more human time scale, we burn wood to

0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.760
<v Speaker 1>release stored energy stored in the plant, or we turn

0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.560
<v Speaker 1>corn into alcohol and burn the alcohol. Another technique that

0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.519
<v Speaker 1>nature uses the store energy is fat, which many of

0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:08.680
<v Speaker 1>us are familiar with in a personal way. It's interesting

0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.760
<v Speaker 1>to think about a car that somehow eats grass or

0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:14.720
<v Speaker 1>some other form of carbohydrate and stores it is fat.

0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:18.880
<v Speaker 1>You can take energy and split water into its hydrogen

0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:23.160
<v Speaker 1>and oxygen atoms using electrolysis. By storing the hydrogen, you

0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.160
<v Speaker 1>can later create energy by burning it or by running

0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:28.880
<v Speaker 1>it through a fuel cell. You can use energy to

0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:31.959
<v Speaker 1>spin up a flywheel and then later extract the energy

0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:34.840
<v Speaker 1>by using the flywheel to run a generator, or you

0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:37.800
<v Speaker 1>can store heat directly and later convert the heat to

0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.440
<v Speaker 1>another form of energy like electricity. Molten salt is one

0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.320
<v Speaker 1>way to do this. You can use compressed air to

0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.600
<v Speaker 1>store energy, or you can compress air a lot and

0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.920
<v Speaker 1>get something like liquid nitrogen and use the liquid nitrogen

0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:53.960
<v Speaker 1>to power a car. One of the new technologies that

0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.320
<v Speaker 1>may become available in the future involves antimatter. When you

0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:01.000
<v Speaker 1>combine matter with antimatter, you get energy. You can store

0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.680
<v Speaker 1>energy by creating anti matter. Right now, none of these

0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.640
<v Speaker 1>techniques can hold a candle, which is really another form

0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:11.880
<v Speaker 1>of stored energy, to gasoline in the convenience sense. Fuel

0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.560
<v Speaker 1>cells look to be the closest competitor right now, and

0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.560
<v Speaker 1>they'll probably become available to the general public over the

0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:21.520
<v Speaker 1>next few years. For more on this and thousands of

0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:28.480
<v Speaker 1>other topics, is it how stuff works dot Com. Your photos,

0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.120
<v Speaker 1>music and documents are irreplaceable. Protect them with Mosey by

0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:34.640
<v Speaker 1>e m C, the most trusted name and cloud back up.

0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:37.479
<v Speaker 1>Back up your files today and save ten percent with

0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:40.960
<v Speaker 1>promo code. Brain Stuff at Mosey dot com, m o

0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:42.720
<v Speaker 1>z y dot com