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They skipped a few real competitors that'll shrink their market: 1. In places with underground water reservoirs, these can be used for heat storage very simila

They skipped a few real competitors that'll shrink their market: 1. In places with underground water reservoirs, these can be used for heat storage very similar to this. It's location dependant but I think there's European district heating networks doing this already. 2. Heat pumps for process steam are gaining ground. The temperature at which heat pumps lose competitivness is slowly rising over time. They mention storage at 600C. Heat pumps win under 80C and are up to 160C and aiming for 200C though at those temps cheap gas will probably win for now. Heat pumps can also recycle process heat and cool and heat at the same time. 3. Wind doesn't get mentioned. Wind doesn't pair as neatly with batteries as solar does but in places with seasonal storage issues the batteries can be used for solar and wind during summer and wind plus whatever (biogas/nuclear/hydro) in winter. They need to worry about both centralised big batteries and customer sited ones. In general I'm supportive of the idea, but similar to the Nordic sand battery, when they start talking about generating electricity from the stored heat I take that as a signal that they've realised the alternatives above combine to really squeeze the market they have left and undermines my faith in the rest of the product.

conradev 1y ago
Yeah, Form Energy exists to basically disprove this: Batteries will still be too expensive to arbitrage these seasonal differences effectively. Thermal electricity storage is orders of magnitude cheaper for storage, but worse at daily cycling Form, like the authors, agrees that Lithium-ion is great for intra-day cycling and not suitable for is seasonal storage. Unlike the authors, Form believes it can engineer chemical storage with the requisite properties. Form’s batteries have something like 10 days of capacity relative to the size of their inverters.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  Form's basic idea is that low round trip efficiency can work as long as it's cheaper enough. They've always had $20/KWh as a notional price but there's already talk of Sodium batteries in China getting near that price point, while having nearly double the round trip efficiency.

conradev 1y ago

Yeah, Form Energy exists to basically disprove this: Batteries will still be too expensive to arbitrage these seasonal differences effectively. Thermal electricity storage is orders of magnitude cheaper for storage, but worse at daily cycling Form, like the authors, agrees that Lithium-ion is great for intra-day cycling and not suitable for is seasonal storage. Unlike the authors, Form believes it can engineer chemical storage with the requisite properties. Form’s batteries have something like 10 days of capacity relative to the size of their inverters.

ZeroGravitas 1y ago
Form's basic idea is that low round trip efficiency can work as long as it's cheaper enough. They've always had $20/KWh as a notional price but there's already talk of Sodium batteries in China getting near that price point, while having nearly double the round trip efficiency.