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A comment on Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt. Parent comment

Re:Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to stor... by Pxtl on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @11:44PM (#18722570)
Pneumatic energy storage and pumped water storage both have very low efficiency but also low cost, so there are plenty of techs in this space that are being explored.

The question is whether wind and solar can be made cheap-enough to be worth overbuilding them five times over to feed into inefficient energy storage, or if we should just stick to batteries or hydrogen.

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Re:Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to stor... by spqr0a1 on Thursday December 20, 2018 @12:12AM (#18722661)
Pumped storage has ~80% round-trip efficiency. It's as good as lithium batteries. The biggest limitation is that there's not much room for growth. Most good sites for pumped storage have already been built.
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Re:Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to stor... by londons_explore on Thursday December 20, 2018 @06:11AM (#18723944)
In the developed world, flooding cities to make hydro stations is very unpopular...
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