3 ms·
Any reason we cannot melt the salt the conventional way while using excess electricity from renewables?
by ReptileMan 7y ago
Any reason we cannot melt the salt the conventional way while using excess electricity from renewables?
- asdfman123 7y agoYou mean melting the salt using electricity with excess capacity? I'm not an expert but I'm guessing we don't do this because the process of converting heat back to electricity is pretty inefficient. I think I saw someone say you only capture 1/3rd of the energy when you do that. However, if you're already starting with heat and need to convert it to electricity, you can just store it for later conversion.
- beat 7y agoEngineering-wise, no. It's just a question of conversion efficiency and cost. Use electricity to heat up a thermal store (molten salt), pull power from the thermal store via generator. But how much does it cost, relative to any number of other storage mechanisms that do basically the same thing - but particularly batteries?