fireofenergy

Alternative Energy Storage: Lithium, Lead or Both?

At first i was skeptical (about advanced sla), but I didn't resaerch. I believe that lugging around a few extra pounds is a good thing if it helps the cause of generating renewable electricity by being far cheaper. Speaking of which, solar thermal storage is better than building lakes on top of high hills, or filling our dried up oil wells with air (that gets hot under pressure and subsequently "self discharges").

Perhaps we should put (overseas) excess cheap oil back into those dried up wells instead??? Since it is not really in excess! (I know, that sounds rather nationalistic...)

Solar thermal storage has a much lower self discharge through heat dissapation but would need a much larger (than required) mirror field in order to maintain baseload. And, of course, it is virtually unlimited in nature if just part of the world's deserts were to be mirrored by ambitious mirror mass production companies. Most countries are large enough to absorb intermittancy from bad weather.

And guess what the other side of the world will export when oil does indeed get too expensive for the masses... synfuels made by solar thermal energy and coal. Yuk! Or even worse yet, become our own desert CSP sources!