Comment by cyberax
11 hours ago
I just don't see it with thermal. You have to pay the Carnot tax, and you also need humongous amounts of material.
E.g. 100 GWh (4 days of 1GW thermal power) with a 100C temperature swing (you can't go down all the way to room temperature) will need around 3.6*10^4 tons of sand. That's a lot.
Honestly, power-to-gas sounds like the only reasonable way for now. In theory, with SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cells) for power generation, it can beat the steam cycle.
The temperature swing can be much greater than 100 C. Heat can be extracted as a wave passing through the store, then heat added back by reversing the flow. It would operate like a counterflow heat exchanger.
View another way: if we hook several piles in series, then lukewarm air from a first mostly discharged pile can be directed into later piles for more heating. In the continuous limit this is the concept I described above.
> The temperature swing can be much greater than 100 C.
No, because your steam will be at a lower temperature as you draw down the heat, bringing down efficiency.
Realistic designs for this can achieve 450C delta t. Your energy store can store at ~1000C (slightly below rock melting point), and run steam turbines with a hot side of 600C and a cool side of 150C.
Over the season, your sand drops from ~1000 to ~600 (which is fine since your power needs drop in the spring)
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That is wrong, and I already explained why.
36000 tons... doesn't actually sound like that much? That's a ~30x30m cube of dirt.
But I have no reference for the cost of setting up such a storage and how it compares to battery or hydro.
The ~grid scale design of this for reference is somewhere around 200mx200mx50m for above ground, or ~100m cube (or bigger) for quarry infill. Such a design is going to get crushed by battery/hydro over the hours/days, but wins on cost for seasonal usage.
The cost of putting dirt in a pile is $1-2/ton.
so $36-72k for days of 1GW of power? Sounds pretty cheap to me ...
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The biggest expense will be the pipework inside that pile. That you won't be able to service easily. And you'll also need a LOT of insulation around it to prevent heat from leaking out too quickly.
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