Quote:
Originally Posted by P-hack
how come I am competing with the electric companies for lithium batteries again?
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Supply and Demand ... both you and the electric companies have a use for electrical energy storage ... Lithium batteries are one way to do that.
Although the utility grid has deeper pockets than you ... so it might be a good thing ... eventually ... as they provide the funding today for the battery improvements you can take advantage of latter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by P-hack
And how does making heat at 99% efficiency translate to making electricity?!?
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The heat produced can be used to make electricity ... it's one part of one type of energy storage cycle.
There are always losses ... but ... when it takes hours or even days for some of the electric company facilities to power up or power down ... the utility grid often doesn't even bother to start to power them down ... if they are producing 10% or 20% more power than the current real time grid demand is for ... they just throw the extra production away.
Thus recycling any of that energy that would have been thrown away is better for over all energy efficiency than just throwing it away... even 1% round trip cycle efficiency is better net energy efficiency than 100% thrown away.
It would be better net efficiency if the grid is smart enough to know you will need to store it before the heat to electric stream turbine has converted the heat to electric ... because then you can just store the heat as heat.