It's funny how useful water is for power generation.
There's heat storage as discussed here.
Or you can store cold water in a reservoir as a giant battery, pumping it up high when you've got excess power, and letting it back down to generate hydroelectricity from it later.
Or you can boil water to make steam that spins a turbine and use it to convert anything that can heat water (coal, oil, nuclear...) to electricity.
In the UK there was a unfortunate trend of ripping out these energy storage devices and replacing hot water tanks with on demand electric hot water heating ( only heat the water you need ). And new builds often have no tanks ( as it saves space in the new tiny homes ).
Very short sighted in my view - a very simple way to store energy and everyone uses hot water directly.
I think the advantage is that hot water loses heat over time, depending on how good the insulation is. However with phase change materials, the heat is trappped in the phase change and is stable until you release it.
ZeroGravitas|28 days ago
The phase change stuff has positives like taking up less physical space but it's also a much less mature tech than storing hot water.
Nition|27 days ago
There's heat storage as discussed here.
Or you can store cold water in a reservoir as a giant battery, pumping it up high when you've got excess power, and letting it back down to generate hydroelectricity from it later.
Or you can boil water to make steam that spins a turbine and use it to convert anything that can heat water (coal, oil, nuclear...) to electricity.
DrScientist|28 days ago
In the UK there was a unfortunate trend of ripping out these energy storage devices and replacing hot water tanks with on demand electric hot water heating ( only heat the water you need ). And new builds often have no tanks ( as it saves space in the new tiny homes ).
Very short sighted in my view - a very simple way to store energy and everyone uses hot water directly.
shellfishgene|27 days ago
vee-kay|27 days ago
Earth's oceans and seas act as giant heat sinks.
And that means more trouble as global climate change impacts..
https://www.earth.com/news/ocean-warming-broke-records-for-4...