If you are pushing nuclear power by saying renewables are non-starters, Texas would like a word. 40% of our electricity is renewable.
It takes less than a year to build wind or solar farm.
It takes three to six YEARS for nuclear — and the power is more expensive. About triple. That’s insane!
The SPOF are also higher with nukes.
And the mind boggling reality is that if you want to reduce climate change quickly, renewables are faster to implement, cheaper to run and result in a power that is less harmful to people than nuclear (which ALWAYS hurts poor people in the same way coal mining does).
Read a great article where people are using heat energy as batteries. Upside is they are cheap and have no failure points. Unlike chemical batteries, they can be reused up to 50 years.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/16/climate/solution-hot-rocks-renewable-energy-battery/index.html
Here is an example. The solar array of photovoltaics in the background heat up the carbon blocks in the insulated box that says “Antorra” — that is a battery and stores 10 times the energy of a lithium ion battery. Bill Gates has invested cash and they were at the climate conference.
It’s a really cool and simple tech.
Another competitor is using plain old bricks!🧱
I thought that was awesome and seriously low tech!
BTW, no one is talking about concentrated solar power.
This uses normal photovoltaics. Excess power is used to heat rocks as a thermal battery.
Some people need to read the article, yo.
Yes.
I am a big fan of "Rocks in a Box" for both industrial heat, and as energy batteries.
Simple
Cheap
Very little, to no, rare-earth materials.
Low Maintenance.
Easily scaleable.
@corlin @feloneouscat CSP's potential for energy storage/buffering have historically received a lot of hype and attention.
Honestly, I'd be over the moon if it actually turned out to be viable in practice - the "power" in power engineering means thermal/steam power, so it'd certainly keep me employed - but so far CSP has mainly been a big 'ol flop for a variety of reasons.
Pumped hydro and even compressed air energy storage have seen far more successes so far.
@feloneouscat @corlin Hmm, good point, I missed that - saw solar, saw hot rocks, briefly skimmed, assumed it was the same as about a million different CSP projects. Thanks for pointing that out!
I do wonder how it competes with something like a molten sulfur battery - those are some pretty cool tech, even if there are some serious kinks that need ironing out.
@feloneouscat @corlin Hmm. Cycle life of sodium-sulfur batteries isn't as good as I remember companies promising they would eventually be back in the day.
I seem to recall there was chatter about the potential to develop sodium-sulfur batteries with a theoretically infinite cycle life because of the liquid anodes and cathodes... but it looks like in practice the solid electrolyte ended up being a weak link. Too bad.
@corlin @feloneouscat In the city where I grew up, they had a CSP pilot plant (using molten salt storage), and they were planning to go full-scale if it worked.
I was hoping to get the chance to work there eventually... then they shut down (and dismantled, IIRC) the pilot plant because it failed to achieve its objectives (it barely worked at all, from what I heard).
When I looked into it, I found that to be emblematic of a larger pattern within the nascent CSP industry as a whole, sadly.
@feloneouscat CSP has a long track record of hype, buzz, and epic failures...
Hardly any actual successes.
PV is dominant for reason.
I honestly like this idea. It’s simple and it just works.