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>What do you mean by "bottling it"? Aluminum production, for one example. Bauxite is so cheap and abundant that the cost of aluminum is almost entirely in the
by ramesh31 4y ago
>What do you mean by "bottling it"?
Aluminum production, for one example.
Bauxite is so cheap and abundant that the cost of aluminum is almost entirely in the electricity required for smelting. And because aluminum is such a critical material for industry, it is effectively equivalent to energy exportation. This is why tiny Iceland is a top 10 global exporter of it: abundant free geothermal energy with nowhere else to go.
- cauch 4y agoYes. It's basically demand response based on turning on and off factories.
- nradov 4y agoNo one is going to invest in an aluminum plant unless they have some assurance of cheap electric power for many years. The capital expense and fixed operating costs for those plants are tremendous. It's not economical to start and stop production on a daily basis as power prices fluctuate. How would you even schedule the production workers? And you still have to pay things like property taxes and insurance whether the plant is producing or not.
- m4rtink 4y agoAlso the local district heating company installed an electric 30 MW water heating boiler recently, which they can run on excess electric power and throttle down the regular combined cycle plant powered by natural gas.