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I've never heard of this as a viable economic way of storing solar power. Don't those aluminum forges have to run 24/7 and starting/stopping them is a huge pain
by ariwilson 6y ago
I've never heard of this as a viable economic way of storing solar power. Don't those aluminum forges have to run 24/7 and starting/stopping them is a huge pain in the ass?
- luma 6y agoI don't think they mean this as power storage, rather, shifting the location of power usage to the place where power prices could be ridiculously low. Smelting bauxite is an energy-intensive process. If you do it in China, you need to import the energy to do it. If you instead send bauxite to KSA they could use their cheap energy and send the resulting aluminum to China. It's not storing the energy, it's making energy storage and transport a redundant step.
- retrac 6y agoNot so much storing, as exploiting the locally-cheap energy. Canada for example, was and still is, a major destination for bauxite ore. There are large hydroelectric dams in Quebec dedicated specifically to aluminum smelting.
- eloff 6y agoYeah, it is a pain with all smelters currently in use. There is maybe an alternative deign that could change that. But the idea here is not to store the energy, but to export it as chemical energy via aluminum.