Sabine
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Coming up on August 20
🕑 Added 2022-08-17 12:00:06 +0000 UTCThe war in Ukraine has been a sudden wake-up call for countries in Europe to break their dependence on Russian gas. A lot of countries put their hope on solar power and wind turbines, but these will not get us through the winter without decent energy storage options. On Saturday we look at how bad the situation is, what energy storage solutions there are, and how their carbon footprint looks like.
(I'm traveling until August 26 and may be slow to reply.)
Comments
As much as I have a fondness for the Carnot cycle, its efficiency is peanuts compared to the TPVs from that reference. One might think that if we use concentrated sunlight to boil our water, then screw the efficiency because the input energy is free, but, unfortunately, we live on a big round spinning ball and so there is a need to store energy for later use.
Rad Antonov
All valid points by Tracey and D Brown. Personally, I love how research in energy storage leads to discoveries in materials science and semiconductor physics, like this recent Nature paper on thermophotovoltaics: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04473-y. Is it just me or do you guys also think it’s nigh time we move away from boiling water to make electricity?
D Brown
Energy usage during the covid lockdown suggests that if we paid more attention to energy usage that was not mandatory for 'everyone' (e.g. driving to work), we could find a way to met mandatory needs.
