[jandrese]

I'm not a fan of this personally. Compressed air is dangerous. A full tank is basically a bomb. While we have the technology to make this safe, it has to be regularly inspected. If your homeowner slacks on the inspections they could come home one day to discover their energy storage has turned itself into a crater and flattened all nearby structures.

One thing to consider is that the heat generated by compressing the air could be vented into the home to warm it up in the winter, or simply allowed to escape outside in the summer. When discharging the cool air would either be released outside or inside of the home, depending on if you want to cool it off.

[atrus]

I mean, doesn't any big energy storage device become essentially a bomb? Batteries have some pretty impressive failure modes. As do large tanks of fuel. Even piped in energy sources can be dangerous as well. How many houses have literally exploded over a leaking gas line? Or burnt down due to faulty wiring?

Large amounts of energy stored in an area is inherently dangerous, no matter the form.

[jandrese]

People talk about batteries "exploding", but really they're just burning fast. An air tank explosion however will decimate everything nearby. Even small SCUBA tanks can release a tremendous amount of energy when they go, which is why they are typically refilled inside of water baths.

[Doxin]

Scuba tanks operate at wildly higher pressures than your average air compressor. Scuba tanks are at anywhere from 160 bar to 240 bar. The usual sort of compressor you'd use for running your tools tops out at 8 bar.

Make no mistake, 8 bar escaping from a compressor is no joke. It's the equivalent of two elephants worth of air suddenly entering the room. It'll rupture eardrums and shatter windows but the building will still be standing. I wouldn't be so sure about that when a scuba tank decides to explode though.

[ezconnect]

All energy storage is some kind of bomb. We just go on with our life because they dont usually go off. Just search the news for LPG explosions and see how devastating it is. Even our cars run on explosions.

[vagrantJin]

Had to explain to my nephew that explosions are life. The sun is an explosion or a bunch of them. His mind was similarly blown.

[ezconnect]

Yeah forgot about the sun. It takes 8 minutes for light to travel from sun to earth. If something weird happen to it, it will take us 8minutes before we see it.

[wil421]

How is compressed air any different from houses with large natural gas tanks? My father in law bought a house with some property and no gas like. The tank is like 20+ years old and it’s filled every few years.

[jandrese]

Compressed air is way more dangerous than liquid fuel. Liquid fuel needs oxygen to burn, so it is slow to start and prone to starving itself. All compressed air needs is an undetected defect in the tank and it will turn into heavy knives flying at supersonic speed.