Readit NewsGreat if it can continue to be cheaper, of course. Fingers crossed that they can make it work at scale.
So no environmental advantages. It's supposedly 30% cheaper than lithium-ion, but BYD cars have sodium-based based batteries on the road right now which CATL says will end up being 10-20$/kwh (10x cheaper than current batteries).
So what's the actual advantage of this ? I think it's just lucky to land just at the right time where batteries aren't cheaper enough yet.
Usually you want to keep the heat and put it back into the compression medium during decompression and hope that losses from the heat storage aren't too big, but when you have a cooling use case nearby, you can use that low intensity heat to compensate heat storage losses, or even overcompensate. When you consider how much of the power input of a datacenter is typically used for cooling, compressed gas storage could be useful even if there was zero electric recovery (just time-shifting the power consumption for cooling to a time with better energy availability)
I’m a long time Apple user and I’m concerned with the state of things.
Im considering returning this piece of junk.
The much bigger problem is that they've lost the wow factor in their software design, and in some regards the hardware as well even though the internals and build quality has never been better. Apple needs a design shakeup far more than it needs anything to do with AI, a poison pill which will bring the entire industry down in 2026.
Dye may have also been involved in that, given how unpopular he was internally at Apple. But more likely just personal / Meta offered him a billion dollars. Maestri leaving was also probably totally uninvolved.
Srouji is the weirdest case, and I'm hesitant to believe its even true just given its a rumor at this point. Its possible he was angry about being passed over for CEO, but realistically, it was always going to be Ternus, Williams, or Federighi. If Ternus is the next CEO, its likely we'll see Apple combine the Hardware Technologies and Hardware Engineering divisions, then have Srouji lead both of them. I really do not see him leaving the company.
The other less probable theory is that they actually picked Fadell, and this deeply pissed off many people in Apple's senior leadership. So, what we're seeing is more chaos than it first seems.
Generally, as long as Srouji doesn't leave, these changes feel positive for Apple, and especially if there's a CEO change in early 2026: This is what "the fifth generation of Apple Inc" looks like. I don't understand the mindset of people who complain about Apple's products and behavior over the past decade, then don't receive this news as directionally positive.
Clearly power capacity cost (scaling compressors/expanders and related kit) and energy storage cost (scaling gasbags and storage vessels) are decoupled from one another in this design; are there any numbers publicly available for either?