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You know, unless I can build it easily for my own personal use I don't care so much but that's fine. Large scale ultra cheap (if it works and is efficient) it important.

Archive: https://archive.todau/J8bN9

From the post:

>Standard Thermal is the company I've been leading for the last ~2 years. The purpose of Standard Thermal is to make energy from solar PV available 24/7/365 at a price that is competitive with US natural gas. Our technology works by storing energy as heat in the least expensive storage material available - large piles of dirt. Co-located solar PV arrays provide energy (as electricity) and are simpler and cheaper than grid-connected solar farms. Electric heating elements embedded in the dirt piles convert electricity to heat. Pipes run through the pile, and fluid flowing through them removes heat to supply the customer. The capital cost, not including the solar PV, is comparable to natural gas storage at less than $0.10/kilowatt-hour thermal and 1000x cheaper than batteries.

You know, unless I can build it easily for my own personal use I don't care so much but that's fine. Large scale ultra cheap (if it works and is efficient) it important. Archive: https://archive.todau/J8bN9 From the post: >>Standard Thermal is the company I've been leading for the last ~2 years. The purpose of Standard Thermal is to make energy from solar PV available 24/7/365 at a price that is competitive with US natural gas. Our technology works by storing energy as heat in the least expensive storage material available - large piles of dirt. Co-located solar PV arrays provide energy (as electricity) and are simpler and cheaper than grid-connected solar farms. Electric heating elements embedded in the dirt piles convert electricity to heat. Pipes run through the pile, and fluid flowing through them removes heat to supply the customer. The capital cost, not including the solar PV, is comparable to natural gas storage at less than $0.10/kilowatt-hour thermal and 1000x cheaper than batteries.

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[–] 1 pt

Sand/brick storage always runs into the exact same issue: the heat needed to return power to the grid means that the storage is useless for anything other than thermal applications. US doesn't use a lot of public heating pipes, and we don't have a lot of steel/metal processing left in the US. Might be more economical outside the US I guess. But there's a very good reason people use batteries. The new sodium or iron flow tech is a much better solution.