this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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If you're going to create infrastructure to use the extra power, you may as well do useful work with it.
Aluminium smelting is about the most energy intensive thing we do, so better electricity management around that would be far more useful to far more people than creating digital assets for board members to get excited about. Just as an example.
Realistically the easiest way to use cheap/free electricity is to charge electric cars with it. Then we have energy storage and offset power usage later on when electricity is more expensive. There are plenty of ways to continue to make money off that process even if the electricity itself costs very little.
I doubt aluminum smelting makes sense as an intermittent thing.
This is where people keep coming back to hydrogen. While hydrogen doesn’t make sense for vehicles, or long term storage, it might for time shifting of intense energy uses locally
Solar—>hydrogen—>aluminum smelting?
Right, this is essentially another form of battery. Maybe it'll work out. It doesn't require flooding an entire river valley somewhere, so that's nice.
Yes, we need to stop thinking "battery" and broaden to energy storage as a whole, which can take many more forms (wind up a big coil! Push things uphill!).