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That's a good article with lots of context on the issue.
However one thing is missing: round trip efficiency figures. The whole process of turning electricity into heat, then back into electricity, is probably low efficiency.
There is mention of directly using heat for industrial processes or heating. That's probably a best use of energy since it avoid some energy conversation losses.
The thing is that efficency doesn't matter too much if this energy used is from intermittent sources like wind or solar and if there is too much energy at this moment and not everything can be used. So it is better to safe energy at lower efficiency than not saving anything at all.
Yeah, large-scale power plants have an efficiency of maybe 55%. Small scale heat engines are pretty hard to make work better than 30%.
Storage with solid weights is probably competitive with this. Hopefully someone figures out a low-cost grid battery.
IEEE allows puns now?
Science communication could use a few puns.