It's an interesting idea, but getting the heat out of the rocks quickly is an engineering hurdle.
And how much heat do you need in general? Unless they can make steam and drive turbines, it seems like it's good for a limited number of uses.
"Researchers from Tanzania".....ummm, color me skeptical.
I've seen brick kiln ideas that seemed to be a better idea than this, honestly. Could it work? I guess...I mean, large enough rocks, and proper medium to take up the empty space since air is a horrible medium for energy storage. If you're using rocks for energy storage though, I doubt filling a shipping container with bricks would be a major hurdle though if you can already afford the panels you'd need to heat them up.
These guys from Finland are working on a sand battery idea. https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery
They installed some of those at Fort Carson in Colorado. I've been following the progress to see how well they work.
Passive solar has been around since the dawn of human history.
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