[HN Gopher] 'Freeze-thaw battery' stores electricity long-term f...
___________________________________________________________________
'Freeze-thaw battery' stores electricity long-term for seasonal
release
Author : OJFord
Score : 95 points
Date : 2022-04-05 13:15 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eandt.theiet.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (eandt.theiet.org)
| seltzered_ wrote:
| "The freeze-thaw phenomenon is possible because the battery's
| electrolyte is molten salt - a molecular cousin of ordinary table
| salt. The material is liquid at higher temperatures but solid at
| room temperature. The freeze-thaw battery was shown to retain 92
| per cent of its capacity over 12 weeks."
|
| Any relation between this and 'sodium-ion' battery companies like
| the recently acquired Faradion? (see
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2PmRT3akGk )
| maxerickson wrote:
| The electrolyte is sodium aluminum and chlorine, which sounds
| pretty different than sodium-ion.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266638642...
|
| The PNNL article is somewhat better than the current link.
|
| https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/freeze-thaw-battery-adept-pr...
| cupofpython wrote:
| molten salt is a form of long term energy storage being used by
| some companies. One example is below
|
| https://www.maltainc.com/our-solution
|
| Some alternative methods and related companies:
|
| https://www.greenbiz.com/article/big-money-flows-long-durati...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Iron flow batteries already exist commercially, are even more
| non-toxic/safe, and they don't require heating up (and keeping
| hot, while using) the battery.
|
| https://essinc.com/iron-flow-chemistry/
|
| The utility industry isn't really that interested in storing
| power for an entire season. Very little ROI compared to a system
| that allows them to balance minute-to-minute or day/night...or
| transmission infrastructure improvements. Got excess generating
| capacity? Send it somewhere that doesn't.
|
| I hope that some day in the near future we see home-scale or
| neighborhood-scale iron flow battery systems so that homeowners,
| apartment buildings, and small neighborhoods can go off-grid.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I've never really seen the advantage in going off grid _per se_
| , since it increases the amount of wasted capacity in both
| generation and storage, and running a few wires is cheap enough
| in urban environments. The most efficient arrangement might be
| a global grid.
| projektfu wrote:
| I am not off grid, but the thing that would draw me to it is
| as an individual sustainability goal. Perhaps it would be
| more expensive to initially set up and run, but it should be
| sustainable for 20-40 years. There is the side benefit of
| reducing the demand on energy to acheive this sustainably.
| Spending less on technology and energy means working less. In
| other words, we pay in our own time for the time technology
| saves us.
|
| To quote Thoreau: 'One says to me, "I wonder that you do not
| lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and
| go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country." But I am wiser
| than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he
| that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will
| get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare
| ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when
| wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.
| Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have
| travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the
| mean while have earned your fare, and arrive there some time
| to-morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough
| to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you
| will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if
| the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should
| keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting
| experience of that kind, I should have to cut your
| acquaintance altogether.' _Walden_ , chapter 1, Economy.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Utilities around the US are working in numerous states to get
| favorable legislation letting them pay a fraction of what
| they do now for solar and wind energy fed back into the grid
| by residential and commercial customers. Once you even out
| your meter and reach net generation, any further generation
| into the grid you'll soon be getting bupkus for. Sorry, but I
| got better things to do than line the pockets of my state's
| for-profit utility company.
|
| In rural areas, getting connected can mean tens of thousands
| of dollars...if they even offer it to you at all.
|
| No matter where you are, you have to pay a monthly connection
| fee. It really adds up, and given how cheap solar and wind
| are now, you don't really get anything for it. Battery
| storage systems a couple years ago were very expensive, but
| prices are crashing and safer tech like lithium iron
| phosphate are becoming more commonplace. Heatpump systems
| have gotten so efficient that I'm pretty sure my next furnace
| isn't going to be a furnace, but an electric heatpump.
|
| In my area, we lose electricity for a day or so in the
| winter, 1-3x a season. A year or two ago we were without
| power for 3 days. Everyone has generators; expensive,
| noisy/annoying (especially given they conduct a weekly
| "exercise"), wasteful, polluting, and expensive to maintain.
|
| Having at least a large battery backup would mean I don't
| freeze, I can cook, take a hot shower, do my laundry, and my
| food doesn't spoil. And I don't need to pay the electric
| company for a product that just isn't very reliable and is
| increasingly irrelevant.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Battery storage systems a couple years ago were very
| expensive, but prices are crashing and safer tech like
| lithium iron phosphate are becoming more commonplace.
|
| Unless you live in a mild climate and/or have a full
| Passivhaus-level construction and/or live in a very small
| building, there are no current batteries that will get you
| through a winter of heating.
|
| I live in New Mexico, have some of the best insolation
| numbers around (outside of Arizona), generate around 93% of
| my annual electricity use, including heating (air source
| heat pumps) from a 6.6kW PV array. A battery system large
| enough to store my winter needs built with any currently
| available technology would be completely untenable, both in
| terms of cost and size.
|
| I pay $7.71 as a monthly connection fee, and I get back my
| excess summer production as "free kW" during the winter, an
| arrangement I much prefer to being paid directly. The "free
| kW" are a 1:1 match for my over-production.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Sorry to be a killjoy, but $6/kwh is at least 20x too expensive.
| In 2021, the average price of electricity in the US was 14
| cents/kwh. Assuming you charge with free electricity, your
| charge-discharge efficiency is 100%, there is no capacity loss
| over the years, and your cost of capital is zero, you need more
| than 40 years to break even at that price. All the 4 assumptions
| above and a few others (zero installation and maintenance cost,
| zero insurance, zero cost of disposal) are super unrealistic.
| mechagodzilla wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the article - they're talking about
| the capacity of the battery in terms of kilowatt-hours, not its
| cost relative to round-trip efficiency. If the cost were
| $6/kwh, you could build a 100kwh battery for $600, and
| charge/discharge that many times. I think this is supposed to
| be interesting both for its relatively cheap materials (and
| useful level of energy density), and its ability to be 'frozen'
| in a room-temperature charged state for long periods of time
| without much loss of charge.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Seasonal storage means you charge in the summer and discharge
| in the winter. One cycle per year. You need 40 years to sell
| electricity 40 times.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "Exploring the use of Iron" "Limited by Nickel"
|
| "Limited by Nickel": This is just lithium ion battery storage,
| it is plainly obvious.
|
| "Exploring the use of Iron": using LFP (which will be 200-230
| wh/kg in production later this year)
|
| "Added some sulphur": great, but you're wayyyy behind the
| current state of the art research in Li-S.
|
| That cost is appropriate for maybe a day or two of storage.
| Months between seasons? That's ridiculous, even if we had a
| dirt-cheap 200 wh/kg sodium ion battery which COULD probably
| hit 6$/kg, unlike their unnamed/unspecified techs they are
| "looking into". Likely it is since every other battery buzzword
| was notched in this article.
|
| The use case, providing more energy in the summer, is covered
| with solar + couple day grid storage and existing nuclear or
| gas turbine for load leveling.
|
| What we need is to install as much wind and solar as possible
| to immediately eliminate coal, then add storage and more
| wind/solar as needed to start eating away at gas turbine.
| Nuclear should stick around for long-term load levelling until
| batteries become dirt dirt dirt cheap.
|
| This article is so poorly written that it might as well be
| unintentional FUD.
| phh wrote:
| It doesn't sound like the improvement of cost is enough the
| justify using it only for few cycles a year as the title says
| rather than every other day. That said, I see nothing in this
| article saying why it would be limited to seasonal release, I'm
| guessing it just has a lower self-discharge.
|
| The title made me thought of an idea my father had, for which I'm
| still totally ambivalent:
|
| Freeze water in the cellar (speaking of like 30m^3) using thermal
| pomp during winter to heat house and when electricity costs
| little, and use that ice in summer to cool down the house. I
| didn't run the numbers, but I'd guess that if it was even
| remotely not a pure energy loss some other people would have
| already proposed such things.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Congratulations, you just invented geothermal heat pumps. :)
| They've been the preferred way of hearing single family houses
| in the Nordics since the 90s.
| Haplo wrote:
| Similar systems are actually being build, but with a bigger
| scale (like big office buildings). There is no freezing
| involved, just heating the office space with warm water in the
| winter (cooling the water to ~10degC) and cooling it in the
| summer (heating the water to about 40degC).
| mnahkies wrote:
| During the rebuild of Christchurch, NZ they used this
| technique for a number of buildings, basically pumping out
| water with one well, then re-injecting it with another as I
| understand.
|
| Essentially exploits the ground water remaining a constant
| temperature year around, warmer than the surface in winter
| and colder in summer
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > some other people would have already proposed such things.
|
| Geothermal heat pumps. Been around for decades. Expensive to
| install due to drilling the well or laying the field, but very
| efficient.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Geothermal energy is risky AF though. Even with shallow
| drilling depths, you risk hitting anhydrite and, in
| combination with water, massive damage like in Staufen [1].
|
| [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebungsrisse_in_Staufen_im_
| Bre...
| brtkdotse wrote:
| The large portion of single family homes in Sweden are
| heated (and cooled) using geothermal heat pumps. The drill
| holes are 100-150m deep.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Geothermal energy for power generation and heat pumps for
| heating homes are totally different systems. It's like
| comparing a fireplace in your house to a nuclear power
| plant.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| This exists and is actually used in Germany, it is called
| "Eisspeicher" (ice storage). It is utilizing the effect that it
| takes a huge amount of energy for the water to go from solid to
| fluid, about the equivalent of heating water from 1 to 81
| degrees.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's a few large building air conditioning units that do
| exactly this. Ice Bear was one brand name I think.
| mabbo wrote:
| > Freeze water in the cellar (speaking of like 30m^3) using
| thermal pomp during winter to heat house and when electricity
| costs little, and use that ice in summer to cool down the
| house.
|
| Unless I misunderstood, the Toronto Zoo has or had such a
| system setup for one or more of the food pavilions.
|
| What's interesting about this is that the storage grows with
| the volume (n^3), but the heat/cold loss grows with the surface
| area (n^2). So you're ability to 'store cold' gets better as
| you get bigger.
|
| Just the same, you could also use it backwards in the winter
| time. On hot, sunny days at the end of the summer, warm up the
| water stored.
| [deleted]
| treeman79 wrote:
| How does this compare to hauling ice down from a local
| mountain lake?
|
| Feels like 0-18th century tech. Doesn't mean it's bad though.
| SECProto wrote:
| > On hot, sunny days at the end of the summer, warm up the
| water stored.
|
| Phase change stores/requires much more energy than simple
| temperature change. 0degC Ice to 0degC water transition is
| 334J/g, 0C water to 100C water is ~400J/g (ie 4J/g per degree
| C), 100C water to 100C steam is 2260J/g.
|
| To store heat from the summer for winter warming (say best
| case 40C summer temp) you'd be looking at least 3x as much
| material for heat storage vs ice storage for summer cooling
| (at say -10C)
| xvedejas wrote:
| This is a useful thing: storing energy in a phase change
| makes it easier to keep the energy stored for a longer
| period of time compared to if there was no phase change.
| The difficult part is that steam is much farther from
| ambient temperatures than ice is (and also that it is far
| less compact). Newton's law of cooling means that the
| larger the temperature difference, the faster the heat
| loss, so steam would require much more insulation than ice
| would.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Besides insulation, there's no hope of storing thermal
| energy as steam because the density is 1000 times lower
| than ice or water while the specific heat is similar, so
| the heat capacity per unit volume is about 1000 times
| lower.
| SECProto wrote:
| Storing heat as steam is actually very good and efficient
| - as long as you're storing the heat for location
| shifting, not temporal shifting. It's regularly used in
| combined heat + power plants
|
| (Yeah, I know I'm being both pedantic and off topic,
| since the discussion here is specifically about seasonal
| storage)
| bombcar wrote:
| The cube/square law also applies in the opposite direction,
| this is why it takes longer for lakes to freeze and why the
| Great Lakes never do.
|
| I believe at least one university on the Great Lakes does
| heating and cooling with pipes deep under the lake.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The Great Lakes do occasionally freeze over significantly,
| though never completely. 2013-2014 was one such winter,
| when ice coverage reached 92% across all five lakes. That's
| quite unusual though.
|
| And the city of Toronto uses lake water for cooling. Heat
| from a downtown cooling loop is dumped into the city's
| drinking water supply, bringing the temperature up to
| around 13deg from 6deg (if I remember correctly).
| mabbo wrote:
| Not just drinking water. The cool water is pumped into
| buildings to work as the air conditioner for a lot of the
| big buildings.
| jewel wrote:
| Your father's idea is a good one. Here is a thermal heat pit
| which is being used to store heat for the winter:
|
| https://stateofgreen.com/en/partners/ramboll/solutions/world...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Don't forget that, until the invention of refrigeration, people
| used to harvest ice in northern climates. They would store it
| in hay, and then sell it throughout the year.
|
| Ice was even shipped internationally.
|
| (And, if you're a fan of Disney's Frozen, this is exactly what
| Sven did.)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > The battery's theoretical energy density is 260 watt-hours per
| kilogram
|
| Makes me wonder how big a battery would need to be to handle all
| of the overwinter energy demands of some densely-populated US
| states.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Massive. But I don't think thats the point of this.
|
| I imagine you'd pair this with an energy source(say solar), so
| that you are able to smooth out/absorb excess energy and
| release when its needed. You could use it as an energy supply
| of last resort.
| mfringel wrote:
| Just to put some numbers around that...
|
| Density of ice at 0 degC is 0.92 kg/L. So, 1 kg of ice =~ 1087
| cubic centimeters of space, or a cube ~4.25 inches on a side.
|
| Rounding that down to 4 inches for the moment, you get 27 of
| those per cubic foot, or (260 Wh * 27) = 7.02 kWh, and then
| round _that_ down to give the extra quarter-inch back, you get
| ~6.5 kWh /ft3 theoretical capacity.
|
| A typical household in the US uses 10,715 kWh/year[0], so
| (10715/6.5) = 1648.46 ft3 for a household's worth of freeze-
| thaw battery storage, or a cube 11.81 feet on a side.
|
| Yes, of course it's more complicated than that, but the scale
| is pretty interesting.
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3
| jessriedel wrote:
| For more on the general problem of storing thermal (rather than
| electrical) energy on a seasonal basis see
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storag...
|
| I was especially surprised to learn that serious attempts at
| storing heat in _soil_ and _rock_ have been made
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storag...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community
|
| which in the winter is able recover >40% of the energy stored in
| the ground through boreholes in the summer ("BTES Efficiency")
|
| https://www.dlsc.ca/reports/swc2017-0033-Mesquita.pdf
| nikanj wrote:
| Furthermore, we have a real problem with the soil storing heat:
| https://citymonitor.ai/transport/londons-tube-has-been-runni...
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| Stupid question: can we harness this 100 year old heat to
| power something today?
| vikingerik wrote:
| You can't exactly harness heat; what can be harnessed is a
| temperature _differential_ , to convert into some form of
| mechanical motion or electrical potential. You'd need some
| apparatus that connects the hot mass and some cold sink
| with thermocouples. Whether that's possible or feasible on
| the scale of the London Tube, I don't know.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect
|
| Instead of that, probably a more feasible way to make use
| of heat is just as heat, by some way of circulating it into
| buildings in the winter. One interesting angle of looking
| at this would be that it's really an artificially created
| geothermal source.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Yes
|
| https://www.newcivilengineer.com/innovative-
| thinking/harness...
| lbriner wrote:
| This is pretty sweet!
|
| There isn't enough information about larger/heavier but greener
| battery technology that would be suitable for grid/home storage
| without the environmental costs associated with the rare earth
| stuff needed for transportation.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Tangent, but in the seasonal storage context.
|
| Apparently, according to a reported simulation, if you (1) take a
| ca 15m x 15m house thermally in contact with the ground, (2)
| insulate the ground outside to a radius of ca 40m, and (3) heat
| the interior to say 25C, then (4) evenually (50years?) the ground
| itself under the house will come up to a steady temperature
| consistent with that.
|
| Even if the simulation was correct, I can only see this being
| sustainable with solar gain being used for heating, but it makes
| for an interesting long-term-oriented picture.
|
| One imaginable scale of application could be for a cluster of
| houses in a larger agricultural setting.
| snewman wrote:
| Gradual heating of the ground is definitely a thing; over the
| decades, certain London Tube lines have drifted from pleasantly
| cool to sweltering: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/central-
| line-temperature-lon...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Yes, people are literally dying in the heat from heart
| attacks because city planning won't allow TFL to knoxk down a
| house sp they cam build a ventillation shaft
| jdmichal wrote:
| Do the tubes never cross a road? Why knock down a building
| instead of taking a vent to a street?
| gnorme wrote:
| I'd love to read more about this simulation, have any links?
| a9h74j wrote:
| I am unable to find a link, and IIRC this was reported 10
| years ago or so. I recall an attribution to German designers
| or architects. I cannot remember where exactly it was
| reported, but I remember it as moderately plausible
| reporting, although not in a journal.
|
| A quick estimate with soil:
|
| Take a specific gravity of 2.7 gm/cm^3, a specific heat of
| 0.2 cal/gm-K, and 1 cal ~ 4.2J ~ 4.2 W-sec. For a cube 25 m
| (2500cm) on a side, if I am not mistaken this suggests a
| thermal inertia of about 3.5E10 W-sec/K.
|
| Now take a thermal conductivy of 1 W/m-K. For a slab of 25m x
| 25m, also with a thickness of 25m, we get a net conductivity
| of 25 W/K .
|
| Then 3.5E10 W-sec/K divided by 25 W/K gives 1.4E9 sec . Given
| 3E7 sec/year, that suggests about 47 years.
|
| Aka a 50 year time scale.
|
| Of course this assumes a low water table.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Seasonal storage and thermal batteries are pretty easy and cheap
| to construct. The materials tend to be cheap commodities. All you
| need is space to construct them and a way to produce the heat you
| use to charge them.
|
| For example, I know of an experimental setup in the Netherlands
| called CESAR (https://materialdistrict.com/article/battery-
| natural-stone/) that uses basalt rock. The basalt is heated up
| using solar energy in the summer. It is stored in an a metal box
| insulated with wool that apparently retains heat for
| months/years. Long enough to last the winter. You 'discharge' by
| pumping cold water through it. Warm water comes out. Very simple.
| It has been running for a few years and it seems to be cheap and
| work as advertised. Relative to burning gas, this looks like a
| nice idea.
|
| Converting heat to electricity is more tricky and the
| efficiencies tend to be not great. Of course if the storage is
| cheap enough that might not be that big of a deal. Efficiencies
| are also a challenge with geothermal energy. But it's a great
| solution for heating buildings. This particular solution seems to
| work around this using molten salt which allows for a relatively
| large temperature gradient. But without having to drill
| kilometers into the earth's crust.
|
| Probably over time, cost will decide which solutions end up
| getting used where and how. A good insight here is that different
| storage solutions serve very different purposes. You don't use
| lithium ion for seasonal storage. It's way too expensive for
| that. But it's great for short term grid balancing needs and
| seems to be popular for that. Vice versa, thermal mass would be
| probably bad for balancing the grid it's great for storing lots
| of energy that you use up slowly during the winter.
|
| It's a tradeoff between how much energy you need stored, how much
| space you have for storing it, and how quickly you want to
| charge/discharge. It's telling a lot that a relatively expensive
| solution like lithium ion batteries are actually cost competitive
| with things like gas peaker plants. We can do probably do better
| long term. There is no shortage of good & already validated ideas
| in this space. All we need is good old engineering and
| manufacturing to prove products in the market at scale.
| mlatu wrote:
| the article is about an _electrical_ battery that is seasonally
| heated up for usage and cooled down for the long term storage
| of the charge contained in it...
|
| i had only heard of molten salt batteries which need to stay
| hot long term, so they are heavily insulated
|
| maybe this article is talking about a primary battery (i.e.
| electrically not rechargable), which would make more sense
| Gasp0de wrote:
| This doesn't seem cost efficient at all, my (medium sized) house
| in Germany consumes about 3000kWh of electricity during winter.
| This does not include heating, which consumes another 15.000kWh
| (of heat energy from oil, so around 5000kWh electrical energy
| with a heat pump).
|
| If I were to use this battery I would need to get 3000(8000)kWh
| of energy storage at 23$ per kWh which would amount to
| 69000(184000)$. There are better hydrogen-based solutions for
| that cost. Also, did I read correctly that I have to keep the
| battery heated to 180degC during discharge? This is going to
| waste a lot of energy in winter.
| harg wrote:
| You're assuming that the battery needs to store the total
| energy requirements of a house for the entire year. Much of the
| time the energy needs can be met by conventional energy
| generation (wind turbines, solar, hydro, etc) and the battery
| is only called upon when there's a shortfall. So you'd only
| need a fraction of the annual consumption to make it useful.
| The whole idea is to make renewables more effective by storing
| the excess. Grid storage will be an important part of the
| transition to renewables.
|
| But yes, it is expensive, but it's only at the R&D stage. I'm
| sure could be made cheaper, and the article mentions reducing
| the cost to $6/kWh.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| If you use solar power in a climate like Germany you will get
| that kind of math.
|
| Let's say you use 8000 kwh per year, and you have the solar
| capacity to create 8000 kwh per year. Assume you already have
| a normal home battery of ~14kwh so day/night is not an issue,
| the solar production during daytime charges the battery and
| all night time power comes from the battery.
|
| Now your big problem is that 70% of the 8000 kwh solar per
| year is produced from May to September. You need 670 kwh per
| month for usage, so in those four months you have just under
| 3000 kwh too much. Then in April and October the panels
| roughly produce what you use. And November to March you have
| a total shortfall of 3000 kwh.
|
| So you need seasonal storage capacity of about 3000 kwh to be
| able to run an 8000 kwh yearly usage on solar in this
| climate.
|
| The other option is to buy much more solar panel capacity
| than you need, then you can use a smaller battery which in
| total could be cheaper since solar panels aren't that
| expensive anymore.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > The other option is to buy much more solar panel capacity
| than you need,
|
| You need the space to install them also. I have a 6.6kW
| array, and would need 3x that capacity to heat my home
| using electrically-powered air source heat pumps during the
| winter months. Even with 0.75 acres / 0.30 hectares, that
| would be quite a lot of my property covered by panels, and
| way more than could ever feasibly fit on the roof (the
| current array is ground mount).
| [deleted]
| awestroke wrote:
| You heat you house with oil? I thought Germany was
| environmentally conscious
| coryrc wrote:
| It's called "greenwashing". A fair bit of electricity is
| produced with solar (at a far higher cost than their
| neighbor's carbon-free electricity) but their gasoline and
| diesel vehicle manufacturing continues unbounded and their
| heat primarily comes from fossil fuel.
| llampx wrote:
| Germany is still mining coal but they are environment
| conscious so they sell it to Poland to burn and buy
| electricity from them.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Gosh, it's still coming out of academia. It takes awhile before
| these kinds of things are economically viable.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The economics is not great as described, but I wouldn't see
| this at being an individual level solution. The larger it is,
| the easier it is to insulate.
| [deleted]
| ema wrote:
| Just realized that with a battery intended for seasonal storage
| you only get one cycle per year so for the same ROI as a battery
| that cycles weekly or daily it has to be much cheaper per kwh of
| capacity. OTOH it only needs to last for like 50 cycles.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I wonder what the napkin math is vs something like methane
| synthesis.
| cupofpython wrote:
| I like to imagine a system with the different geothermal-like
| technologies working together in maybe a layered like
| structure.
|
| Extracting from the winter / summer cycle, the day / night
| cycle, and the consistent deep ground / surface air temp
| differential.
|
| Granted day / night might not have enough variation to take
| advantage of in a lot of places - but surely some cool tech has
| come out of desert areas right?
| jdmichal wrote:
| Arid locations already enjoy much cheaper cooling via swamp
| coolers over heat pumps. They're just enough to keep it
| bearable during the day, then the night comes and clears out
| all the latent heat.
| wppick wrote:
| Is there any examples of using something like a server farm to
| heat a building in the winter? Removing heat from a server farm
| through heat exchange with a cold building seems like an
| efficient combination of two interests (building needs heat,
| servers need to get rid of heat). Of course this becomes a
| problem in the summer months...
| wongarsu wrote:
| Stockholm, Sweden has an open district heating network:
| buildings can not only buy heat from it for heating, like a
| normal district heating network, they can also sell surplus
| heat to the network. At least two data centers (Bahnhof Thule
| and Bahnhof Pionen) sell heat from their heat exchangers to the
| network.
|
| https://celsiuscity.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Waste-heat...
| pages 7-9
| uomo wrote:
| One of Amazon's buildings in Seattle (Doppler) uses a data
| center next door to reduce their overall heating costs during
| the winter.
|
| Source: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/sustainability/the-
| super-ef...
| Quindecillion wrote:
| This is actually one of the use cases that Satoshi Nakamoto
| spoke about in regards to Bitcoin mining.
|
| The purpose built machines for mining (ASICs) turn electrical
| energy into heat through performing hashes. If you need
| electrical heating there's functionally no difference between
| turning a regular heater on or turning on an ASIC. The benefit
| of turning an ASIC on instead is you can recoup some of the
| cost of expending the electricity.
| grenoire wrote:
| In Amsterdam, the botanical gardens and Hermitage Amsterdam
| exchange heat in that sort of mutually beneficial way, https://
| www.cultureelerfgoed.nl/onderwerpen/praktijkvoorbeel....
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