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Finland has an operational "sand battery", which primary purpose is heating. That was discussed in HN few months ago [1]. When it comes to this article, I doub

Finland has an operational "sand battery", which primary purpose is heating. That was discussed in HN few months ago [1]. When it comes to this article, I doubt the 500x cheaper statement, we would see these already everywhere if that were the case. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44295132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44295132

metalman 1y ago
the reason that thermal storage is becoming very atractive is that electrical power from PV, wind, and other sources has become increadably cheap, and there is litteraly no where to put it, so prices go negative now, which is a new thing. so 500x cheaper may be an understatement, considering the nature of how cheap, mature and availible the technology to build a thermal storage battery is, any municicipal civil engineering team can build one from off the shelf and localy sourced materials, and the basic battery "housing" could be a re purposed industrial building, cheap does not begin to describe it.
- nyeah 1y ago
  But it's easy to build & easy to read about, so "why isn't it everywhere already" still feels like an open question.
  - DangitBobby 1y ago
    It's a good question. But still... > Two economists are walking down the street. One of them says “Look, there’s a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk!” The other economist says “No there’s not. If there was, someone would have picked it up already.”
    - nyeah 1y ago
      Yeah, valid point.
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      If it's a relatively busy sidewalk and you know the object has been there for several hours, that gets to be a pretty good argument.
      - DangitBobby 1y ago
        In this case, the economics of solar has been changing rapidly in recent years, so the caveat won't apply. Worst case, you can bend over and get a closer look.
      - BobaFloutist 1y ago
        Yeah, presumably the Software Engineer laughs at the two moronic "experts" and picks up the religious literature or strip club ad masquerading as cash.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    Combination of very cheap periodic power and suitable infrastructure to supply heat energy is more recent phenomena. Supply that is very cheap power and demand that is capability to use that energy later need to match.
Veedrac 1y ago
500x should be conceptualized as the bare minimum, not evidence of massive low-hanging fruit. A battery that cycles daily makes revenue on its capacity about 350 times in a year. A seasonal energy store makes revenue on its capacity about once in a year. A battery arbitrages between the most expensive and least expensive energy generators in the system. A seasonal energy store arbitrages between seasonal price averages. A battery smoothing out solar production is operating on the difference between how much sun there is in the day, and how much sun there is at night. A seasonal energy store in the same role averages between summer and winter. A factor 500 cheaper plus a significant quantity of solar energy production is about where you'd expect this kind of thermal storage to start making economic sense.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  If we're looking at bare minimum cost then batteries are 10x cheaper than batteries. And being capable of seasonal storage doesn't stop you from using it for daily storage. It's less efficient than batteries, but you can overcome that. Let's say you can make a 24 hour power source with $10M in solar panels and $20M in batteries, including the other equipment and costs. $30M total. If we need twice as much solar for thermal storage, but the storage only costs $1M, then that's $21M for an equivalent system. What stops systems like that from being built right now? I was under the impression that batteries were most of the cost if you want them to last more than a few hours.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    Yes! I created a comment here in similar aspect but the thing that was bugging me a lot was what to do about night time though Imo, the current system of solar energy etc. might be more carbon emissions than even coal because of the way of using batteries and how they are extracted and the whole process and batteries limitations and not solar panels themselves (I think) Like, please pardon me but I think that there might be batteries that overall are cheap/economical/less carbon emissions and they can store energy for a night cycle right? Then using those batteries in your system and I don't know the price point, but I am definitely sure that they might be orders of magnitude cheaper So in your 21M$ example lets say that we can add such night time cheap batteries to counter solar panels not generating light at night and use this 1M$ to generate energy when its either rain or solar production is less or when winters come I still feel like, this might be more economical than the current state of batteries + solar panels. Okay, I just realized that the night time issue can be solved by the grid but still if that's the case, then why have batteries in the first case if lets say every community builds something like this (if this is economical) and people could just pull up energy from it 100% solar in rainy times etc. Like maybe my mind is perfectionist or I genuinely don't know about green energy but to me I wish to know if there is a way that we can transition (almost) 100% to the green (solar) without the drawbacks that I saw in the michael's moore documentary in the sense that it produces more carbon emissions net overall theoretically (which hurts my heart :< but the logic was sound imo)

metalman 1y ago

the reason that thermal storage is becoming very atractive is that electrical power from PV, wind, and other sources has become increadably cheap, and there is litteraly no where to put it, so prices go negative now, which is a new thing. so 500x cheaper may be an understatement, considering the nature of how cheap, mature and availible the technology to build a thermal storage battery is, any municicipal civil engineering team can build one from off the shelf and localy sourced materials, and the basic battery "housing" could be a re purposed industrial building, cheap does not begin to describe it.

nyeah 1y ago
But it's easy to build & easy to read about, so "why isn't it everywhere already" still feels like an open question.
- DangitBobby 1y ago
  It's a good question. But still... > Two economists are walking down the street. One of them says “Look, there’s a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk!” The other economist says “No there’s not. If there was, someone would have picked it up already.”
  - nyeah 1y ago
    Yeah, valid point.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    If it's a relatively busy sidewalk and you know the object has been there for several hours, that gets to be a pretty good argument.
    - DangitBobby 1y ago
      In this case, the economics of solar has been changing rapidly in recent years, so the caveat won't apply. Worst case, you can bend over and get a closer look.
    - BobaFloutist 1y ago
      Yeah, presumably the Software Engineer laughs at the two moronic "experts" and picks up the religious literature or strip club ad masquerading as cash.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- Ekaros 1y ago
  Combination of very cheap periodic power and suitable infrastructure to supply heat energy is more recent phenomena. Supply that is very cheap power and demand that is capability to use that energy later need to match.

Veedrac 1y ago

500x should be conceptualized as the bare minimum, not evidence of massive low-hanging fruit. A battery that cycles daily makes revenue on its capacity about 350 times in a year. A seasonal energy store makes revenue on its capacity about once in a year. A battery arbitrages between the most expensive and least expensive energy generators in the system. A seasonal energy store arbitrages between seasonal price averages. A battery smoothing out solar production is operating on the difference between how much sun there is in the day, and how much sun there is at night. A seasonal energy store in the same role averages between summer and winter. A factor 500 cheaper plus a significant quantity of solar energy production is about where you'd expect this kind of thermal storage to start making economic sense.

Dylan16807 1y ago
If we're looking at bare minimum cost then batteries are 10x cheaper than batteries. And being capable of seasonal storage doesn't stop you from using it for daily storage. It's less efficient than batteries, but you can overcome that. Let's say you can make a 24 hour power source with $10M in solar panels and $20M in batteries, including the other equipment and costs. $30M total. If we need twice as much solar for thermal storage, but the storage only costs $1M, then that's $21M for an equivalent system. What stops systems like that from being built right now? I was under the impression that batteries were most of the cost if you want them to last more than a few hours.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  Yes! I created a comment here in similar aspect but the thing that was bugging me a lot was what to do about night time though Imo, the current system of solar energy etc. might be more carbon emissions than even coal because of the way of using batteries and how they are extracted and the whole process and batteries limitations and not solar panels themselves (I think) Like, please pardon me but I think that there might be batteries that overall are cheap/economical/less carbon emissions and they can store energy for a night cycle right? Then using those batteries in your system and I don't know the price point, but I am definitely sure that they might be orders of magnitude cheaper So in your 21M$ example lets say that we can add such night time cheap batteries to counter solar panels not generating light at night and use this 1M$ to generate energy when its either rain or solar production is less or when winters come I still feel like, this might be more economical than the current state of batteries + solar panels. Okay, I just realized that the night time issue can be solved by the grid but still if that's the case, then why have batteries in the first case if lets say every community builds something like this (if this is economical) and people could just pull up energy from it 100% solar in rainy times etc. Like maybe my mind is perfectionist or I genuinely don't know about green energy but to me I wish to know if there is a way that we can transition (almost) 100% to the green (solar) without the drawbacks that I saw in the michael's moore documentary in the sense that it produces more carbon emissions net overall theoretically (which hurts my heart :< but the logic was sound imo)