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Pumped storage is hard to scale down and has a fairly fixed loss. There are a bunch of other storage technologies that are at the "almost there" stage though. I personally like the Pumped Heat storage from Isentropic as a possible mainstream contender:

http://www.isentropic.co.uk/



That looks really interesting, though I wonder about the energy losses in the pumping mechanism. Are pistons particularly efficient?

As an added bonus, they're based just down the road from me!


Piston efficiency is basically limited by leakage round the seals and friction on the bearings. Can be in the very high 90%s. The system efficiency is limited by Carnot cycle like everything else, I think; they are claiming 75% AC-AC round trip, which is impressive if true.




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