Heat in general seems like the shittiest way to store electricity. The real application there is when you wanted heat anyway, like that cement plant (I think?) in Finland that keeps a tower superheated with renewables and then blows air through it into the kiln.
yeah that is along the lines I was thinking when reading it. heat it to super high but then collect it as light. does not sound efficient.
Heat in general seems like the shittiest way to store electricity. The real application there is when you wanted heat anyway, like that cement plant (I think?) in Finland that keeps a tower superheated with renewables and then blows air through it into the kiln.
yeah and thats super useful because its one of the things that is hard to do with renewables.
It is, although capturing the CO2 that is generated by the chemical creation of dry concrete is probably an even harder problem in that specific case.
well yeah but its worse if the process is running on gas. At least reduces it.