Quote:
Originally Posted by ai_vin
Electricity is hard to store in very large amounts but heat is less hard to store. There are already solar thermal power plants online that can keep running after the sun goes down because they store heat in big tanks of salt.
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At what cost in efficiency, though? I've always suspected that the people selling this kind of plant are banking on the fact that very few investors are familiar with thermodynamics.
Then consider their other disadvantages, such as their voracious need for land (which the promoters seem to get pretty much free from the government - and might not that be the intention?) and other scarce resources, locations far from point of use, requiring long transmission lines, etc.