Tobberone

I honestly thought it would be bigger. Having said that, we (as in the municipality i work for) currently have 40-60 MWh sand batteries in production. The first, small and hot, one is currently charging to go into production when it gets colder. The bigger and colder battery is slated to start charging the next season.

“And you can store it for long periods, not just two hours or four hours like lithium-ion batteries, but potentially for days and maybe even weeks.”

I'm guessing here, but "for days and maybe even weeks" must be because the battery is above ground? With good insulation seasonal storage is very much in the cards.

A day care in another Swedish municipality use about 1/5 of the "normal" energy for heating thanks to a sand battery. As in 15-18 kwh/m2/year as opposed to 70 kwh/m2/year as is the current upper limit for new buildings in Sweden.

It is basically an isolated heat trap for excess electricity/heat during the summer to be used during winter. It is rather like ground heat except for a few notable differences:

The cons are obvious:

• Higher investment,
• More complicated

The pros:

• Doesn't need as much power (higher heat output during winter),
• The community has a goal of using 100% of produced electricity on site (as that is most economical), but this allow us to utilize the entire roof for solar energy, which will be more economical in autumn/spring.

Cost wise, for the tenants, it's no difference, as the lower running costs of the battery is predicted to out weight the extra cost of capital, but in an emergency the house will be much easier to keep light and warm. The plan is to fit the house with batterier and V2G EV-chargers.

So far I've mostly changed how I do stuff, rather than what i do. Electric car instead of ICE, Bike and train for commuting, Solarpanels and 20kWh batteries for most of my summer time energy needs.

At work I have more possibility to make a difference, though. So far I've had batteries introduced (solar was already norm) as an accessory to "our" buildings, I've gotten 2 thermal batteries (sand) built and are currently investigating building mounted small scale wind power. Among other things.

That doesn't seem relevant to the discussion at hand. The question is "is it better if something happens earlier" and if, as you say, the median reaction time is 273 ms, that means that median player a will consistently be 3 ms faster than median player b if they react to the same event all else being equal. 273 ms will beat a total of 276 ms every time in a race to react.

Oil dependence is use as a of controlling the world. Renewables changes that control. Therefore Renewables must be stopped.

Depends on your view point. From a European perspective liberalism is center right, although I'd say that the so called liberalism as discussed in the US is pretty well into the right. The whole spectrum has shifted, so I'd say that what used to be conservative talking points are now liberal talking points.

Depends on what the alternative is. I'd prefer a beer to the water water of Flint i.e.

As bad as airing out a hot car is, it takes on a different need when its -20C and you need to thaw the car out before going to work in the morning. Much preferable to do that from inside.

As bad as things are, I'm still glad that the oil wars are driven by greed and not scarcity. Had the option been mad max things would have been so much more desperate, as things stand, a world with energy and hope is still an option.

This is not the application im worried about in regards to Jerome Paradox. There are other power guzzling techs that will eat any and all energy that can be produced while paying more per kwh than any of us can afford. Those technologies are my primary concern...

How on earth did you arrive at that conclusion? You are the one to bring the orange despot into the discussion to begin with.

Why are you so afraid to admit that the country you live in is not best at everything and may actually have something to learn by looking elsewhere? Having a gated pissing contest is not the way we will learn enough fast enough to have a future. Learning from example is the only way forward.

But I'm a bit astounded by this, do you really feel you have to buy a car simply because it is produced? Don't you have any personal efficacy or desires?

Oh, the new "renewables are bad" talking point. Unlike the general feel of the article I think this is actually just in time. The first TW took 70 years to install, but the second took 2 years (2024). Given 20 years of operational life that means that the quantities starts to accelerate by the end of the 2030-thirties. Which is when the article states that there will be price parity between recycling and landfill...

However, at least here, the cost of landfills has increased and will continue to increase so it quill only be a matter of time...