GigaOm's Katie Fehrenbacher has a post on LightSail Air Energy Storage.
A startup that makes compressed air energy storage technology called LightSail Energy, has raised a whopping $37.3 million series D round led by Peter Thiel, and also including existing investors Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures. LightSail Energy, based in Berkeley, Calif., has been in stealth for awhile, but the company makes a next-generation technology that compresses air in a tank and efficiently releases it on command, creating a sort of air-based battery for the power grid.
I took a look at the technology section of LightSail and the first versions are 1MW containers. What came to mind is whether LightSail could be used in a UPS scenario replacing batteries. If you had a choice between hundreds of lead-acid batteries or a compressed air storage unit, what would you pick?
