3 ms·
>Night time Why does electricity at night need to cost the same as electricity during the day? Would Western civilization collapse if it cost twice as much? Th
by sbierwagen 6y ago
>Night time
Why does electricity at night need to cost the same as electricity during the day? Would Western civilization collapse if it cost twice as much? Three times as much?
How much trouble do we need to go to so aluminum smelters can run at 100% capacity at 2 AM?
- DennisP 6y agoIf you're going to shut down factories at night, that itself is a cost that should be accounted for. If you're shutting down for eight hours a day, you increase capital costs by a third. That's worth paying if it's the only option to address climate change, but if the main argument against nuclear is cost, it's not a fair comparison if renewables externalize cost to the customers. (Also, aluminum smelters in particular take damage if they shut down more than five hours or so.)
- DoctorOetker 6y agowhy don't they store the cheaper day time electricity by melting extra on site aluminum during the day? this aluminum could stay on site indefinitely?
- DennisP 6y agoThe aluminum freezes in about six hours, that's why they take damage if they lose power.
- DoctorOetker 6y agoits not a property of molten aluminum to freeze in 6 hours, it depends on the thermal insulation. what I proposed was to have a secondary sealed thermal bath of aluminum which gets molten during cheap power and which returns heat during expensive power to maintain the temperature of the primary (work) batch of aluminum so that the work batch doesn't freeze the heat can be transfered with an appropriate working fluid. since the secondary thermal bath aluminum doesn't need to satisfy client demands (specific alloy etc) the alloy can be chosen so as to have a suitable melting point for such a setup