mac4mac.co.uk

Do you know that a lot of the clean energy solutions such as wind power and solar power have one fundamental problem. They are intermittent. Sometimes the wind blows and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the sun shines and sometimes it doesn't. So you need to store all this energy when the wind is blowing, and the sun is shining - for the times when you need it. How do you do that? Hydroelectric pumped storage? Lifting and lowering blocks of concrete? .

Or make big batteries of course! Elon is doing that with the large-scale lithium battery storage in Australia, not to mention his for home use.

are making high-capacity, high charge/discharge rate liquid metal batteries running at 500°C.




These systems store energy in some form of battery which can then be used when you need it! Great! They each are complicated/costly technical solutions and there are significant in/out energy losses.

But what about something else that is much simpler, lasts a long time and is low maintenance? .. Sand?


Here is an interesting story. This may have some future for a cheap and easy way to store energy! Heat.

I always wonder how these "clean" energy things can really be clean with all the pollution involved in say battery production???

The links I've posted actually discuss all of this ..
That's why I posted the links!
Nothing is 100%
Heating sand requires basic technology
Lithium mining and battery manufacture requires a few things
Cranes, generators and motors require basic technology
Metal mining for Antimony and salt also requires energy and equipment.

This is a discussion about all of that. I hope some find it interesting at least.
Maybe this is the wrong forum for it.

I'm about out of data for this month so haven't been following many links.