Absolutely! And tests are being performed on how to actually make something that is low carbon and practically useful, like in Fjell, in Drammen in Norway. Unfortunately it's not as easy as finding an aquifer and heat it to boiling point. Here is a link to the Fjell test: https://www.muovitech.com/SE/?page=news&id=649
Tobberone
joined 2 years ago
Well, Yes and no. Water is a great storage, but it is hard to insulate and very corrosive in the long run. And on the grand scale of things, the amount of water that needs to be heated for city scale applications are hard to deal with. There are cities which has connected huge caves to the district heating system, but the amount of energy stored there is rather insufficient. A case in point, Mälarenergi claims that their energy store, the size of about 120 Olympic swimming pools heated to 95 degrees C, would power a city of about 100 000 people for about two weeks in somewhat benign weather conditions.
Winter is longer, though, and we need to find ways of storing more heat for longer to be able to make a real dent in demand. There are other methods though, and even better is that some of them doesn't need any carbon what so ever to be viable. And with the new EU directives (EED and EPBD) the foundations and Incentives has been given to start the race for better (district) heating solutions.
That's true. It is also true that power was generated to support the polish market when half of Sweden's nuclear reactors had to be taken out of production due to some malfunction during a bad cold front in December.
Having said that, electricity is still scarce during winter which means that a lot of it is used for heating. That must end and ideally in a way that let us use the energy excess during summer for heating during winter.
How about internet services suing companies that doesnt advertise?
/Nottheonion
(myth)Buster
Well... Its built on statistics and statistical inference will return to the mean eventually. If all it ever gets to train on is closer and closer to the mean, there will be nothing left to work with. It will all be the average...
That would be nice, but are you implying that the same manufacturers that put spyware in one vehicle refrain from doing it in the other solely based on drivetrain? I try to come up with a logical reason, but I fall short.
Which states is it you are referring to? And which countries? And what is it that you think qualifies as being "further left" in this case?
Oh, you are aussie:) i should have guessed by your username.
Ok, for starters, where I live that big yellow thing stops shining. Practically (for electricity production anyways) for almost 6 months of the year and almost totally for 3. And even with heat pumps we still use several MWh of electricity every year to heat our homes. A battery park can keep a city running for 1h. Even those planned in NSW (BESS is it?) would struggle to keep things running for mire than a day. To be clear:
We need more energy storage than can be provided by electric batteries, than can be bought at battery prices and in scales larger than can be produced with any technology current or in the overseeable future. And we needed it yesterday. Any form of low cost, stable, easy to store solution we can use is a huge step forward. Solar is great! But we need the electricity when the sun doesn't shine. Heat pumps are awesome! But their awesomness is needed when the sun doesn't shine so much. That is why we need more energy storage solutions.
Summertime there are almost limitless electricity available, but that energy needs to be stored somehow. And with limitless (in practice) efficiency isn't an issue. Even storing 1% is better than 0%. Regardless of efficiency.
You said it yourself. Still undiscovered. The technology we have today can't be used to save more than a day or so of electricity. We need to handle months. Finding more energy dense ways of doing it is crucial.
And even if we burn it and put it back in the air, it is still positive, because we won't have added more from oil. And if we get enough of the stuff we can let the trees grow, which would be a carbon sink.
Step 1: stop using oil. If we use the methane as is, we've accomplished this step.
Step 2: scrub carbon from atmosphere. Upping the game and replacing wood for heating would let the trees scrub the atmosphere, creating carbon sinks
Step 3: accelerate. Can processed methsne be stored in energy dense compounds? Like oil was?
That's not a straight line, although it is possible to follow without changing direction😊