LightSail yet again

Image courtesy of LighSail Energy

This will be a short one. LightSail Energy, a startup with innovations in compressed air energy storage, has already appeared in my writing twice, the most recent being after co-founder Danielle Fong was generous enough with her time to take me on a tour of their facility in Berkeley. In the first article I mentioned that I'd delve deeper into the thermodynamics of their process. After the second Ms. Fong mentioned that, in general, she felt that I'd been fair and accurate but that my skepticism regarding LightSail's ability to manufacture systems in the facility I visited was unfounded. Hmm... "uncalled for" is the actual quote. I'd like to take a look at both, but first the manufacturing capacity.

Image courtesy of LightSail Energy

As it happened, it turned out that I hadn't seen the whole facility. Further conversation with Ms. Fong revealed that LightSail's existing Berkeley facility does have some manufacturing capabilities and, in fact, has production runs of tanks in particular. It should be noted (and I've seen Fong tout this publicly in some of the amazingly large number of video presentations in which she's featured) that LightSail states that they have designed, prototyped, tested, and produced tanks with unprecedentedly high merit indices. These tanks can be sold for uses other than compressed air energy storage.

Further, LightSail is able to assemble, commission, and sell their compressor expanders out of their R&D facility. Thus, while LightSail is unlikely to be able to meet full scale production of their storage units at the Berkeley facility in the event that their compressed air energy storage technology takes off at the scale that the Company envisions, it's clear that they do, in fact, have significant manufacturing capabilities there. I stand corrected.