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A comment on Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts. Parent comment

Re:Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts by adgjlsfhk1 on Tuesday June 11, 2024 @10:32AM (#40646607)
IMO this isn't the direction we're going. I'd bet that in 20 years, there will be some form of grid-scale specific battery that is 2-3x cheaper than lithium iron (per joule), but with much worse energy density. Many of the batteries of this type are unsuitable for home installation (because they get more efficient with scale). Some of the potential options for this are things like iron sulfur batteries which require pretty high temps, or some designs for batteries that basically involve physical pumps to pump liquid anodes and cathodes around.
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Re:Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts by szvsw on Tuesday June 11, 2024 @12:38PM (#40648386)
> some designs for batteries that basically involve physical pumps to pump liquid anodes and cathodes around

Yeah in addition to flow batteries there are also grid scale thermal batteries, though these are targeted more towards long duration energy storage: run electricity through a large carbon block in a shipping container form factor to heat it up, then use infrared photovoltaics to convert back to electricity when desired.

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Re:Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts by Teever on Tuesday June 11, 2024 @11:45PM (#40654256)
I'd be interested in learning more about this carbon block battery that you're describing.

I'm also curious how it compares in cost effectiveness to this battery that's based on sand.

https://tambaynews.blogspot.com/2022/07/worlds-first-commerc...

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Re:Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts by szvsw on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @01:13AM (#40654775)
Antora is one example: https://antoraenergy.com/

In addition to a few hundred mil in funding, they have support from NREL/DoE, eg https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2024/how-nrel-helps-start... I also was at a conference recently that had some cool feasibility studies done by people at NREL about using TPV for LDTES with Antora product specs used for boundary conditions, but I don’t think that’s published yet.

I’ve also seen FourthPower mentioned a few times but I don’t know much about them or how feasible their tech actually is.

https://gofourth.com/our-technology/

Energy storage is not my area of expertise (but very much adjacent to it).

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