|
|
|
|
|
|
by throwaway0a5e
2187 days ago
|
|
|
Joules are joules. A "grid scale" compressed air tank going pop is going to do a lot more damage in the immediate vicinity but won't do anything 50mi away. You can't say the same thing about a dam burst. Just because it's dangerous in a way you're not used to doesn't mean it's more dangerous. |
|
|
When talking about battery failure how quickly the energy is released is important.
>A "grid scale" compressed air tank going pop is going to do a lot more damage in the immediate vicinity but won't do anything 50mi away. You can't say the same thing about a dam burst.
If your comparing it to an entire dam, then your looking at underground storage of compressed gas in caverns. For that I agree both are dangerous in different ways.
But the context I was talking about was compressed air tanks which are more comparable to chemical batteries and gravity storage. Catastrophic failure of compressed air tanks is generally going to be more destructive than many other similar alternatives.
>Just because it's dangerous in a way you're not used to doesn't mean it's more dangerous.
A large lithium battery is much less likely to level several buildings than an air tank storing a similar amount of energy. I'm not saying that the dangers of compressed air can't be engineered around, but by almost any reasonable, objective metric you could come up with, compressed air is more dangerous.