this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
28 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37717 readers
465 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's a good article with lots of context on the issue.
However one thing is missing: round trip efficiency figures. The whole process of turning electricity into heat, then back into electricity, is probably low efficiency.
There is discussion of directly using stored heat for industrial processes or heating. That's probably a better use of energy since it avoid some conversation losses.
The thing is that efficency doesn't matter too much if this energy used is from intermittent sources like wind or solar and if there is too much energy at this moment and not everything can be used. So it is better to safe energy at lower efficiency than not saving anything at all.
Yes and no.
Better store than loose energy.
But the choice isn't between heat storage+conversion and no storage. It's between differents type of storage (heat, chemical, gravity, electrolysis, freewheel), with multiple technology and chemistry to choose from for each type.
Since there's many options to choose from, it make sense to compare overall efficiency and cost.