3 ms·
That only works on short timescales, which isn't the main problem because there are so many ways of solving that (for example batteries or thermal storage for h
by makomk 4y ago
That only works on short timescales, which isn't the main problem because there are so many ways of solving that (for example batteries or thermal storage for home heating).
- bluGill 4y agoIf they have notice the smelter will be happy to shutdown for maintenance for a few months. You need to plan this with them a year in advance though.
- jonfw 4y agoSeasonal operation is not desirable and has lots and lots of side effects. As an example, a smelter that operates half the year takes twice as much capital to produce the same throughput as one that operates year round. That’s before we get into all of the reasons that seasonal labor is undesirable, or how much additional warehouse capacity would be required to stockpile the metal which will needed over the unoperational months, or the raw material being stockpiled while it’s unable to be processed, or the impact on just in time supply chains, etc.
- Symbiote 4y agoThe large, industrial users are an example of thermal storage, but at a different scale than home heating. Tesco's fridges are apparently worth about 25-50MW, so like a small grid-scale battery: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/23/cool-running-supermarket-fridges-could-help-power-uk https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/23/cool-runnin... An aluminium smelter is gigawatts, the one in Scotland is 1.2GW, which is a medium-size power plant by itself. They're easy projects, compared to installing thousands or hundreds of thousands of batteries or new heating systems in homes.