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Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

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Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#101

Post by Retric »

hwillis wrote: post #28
pytester wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany and California have both experienced negative electricity prices. The economics of this kind of battery could very well work with a low efficiency if it's cheap to build.

No, not really- negative prices are very short spikes. They aren't driven by fundamental oversupply, they're caused by fossil plants that are unable to ramp down their power output quickly enough to keep the grid in spec. The amount of storage required is very small, but the required power and speed are high. The whole price advantage of thermal storage is in the amount of stored power. It's very cheap to build insul…

3 days is silly. Extra capacity is very cheap, currently we have gas turbines filling this role but extra wind and solar never drop to zero and costs less than needing 5x as much storage.

Now as storage prices drop the equation changes, but not very quickly as their ineffecency means you still need extra capacity and that capacity reduces the need for storage.

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#102

Post by godelmachine »

Bombthecat wrote: post #97

Just a question: why does a sub from Google need to raise money? I would question the confidence if a super big company starts something and is like: uh you know. We collect money from someone else.

Same question - $26M is a small amount for Alphabet.

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#103

Post by occamrazor »

londons_explore wrote: post #96
occamrazor wrote: post #70

My memories of thermodynamics theory are old and full of gaps, but from what I remember both steps, if performed at "normal” temperatures, necessarily produce a waste of energy. The first step, i.e. using electricity to drive a heat pump, is efficient only if the temperature differential between the cold body and the hot one is small. On the other side, conversion of thermal energy into electricity is efficient only…

Your memories are wrong... An ideal heat pump is fully reversible with no energy loss.

Maybe, but I clearly remember that it is not possible to have a reversible process wich only transfers heat from a colder body to a warmer one. The third law also gives quantitative bounds to the reversibility of such processes.

Heat pumps with efficiency above 1 rely on heat transfer between external bodies (e.g. from a subterranean water source to the atmosphere forhome heating systems), but this does not seem to be the system described by Malta.

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#104

Post by codeisawesome »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #58
ramblerman wrote: post #51

The neat little graph showing the rise in global yearly investments up to 2040 is amusing. Nassim Taleb has made me very wary of these things. what's even the calculation behind a projection like that, it even has a little spike in 2035!

Well 2035 was the year they discovered the catalyst that made the reaction hold for months instead of hours. It took years to commercialize though.

Haha what reference is this? I have such an odd feeling I’ve heard this in dystopian sci fi

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#105

Post by iagovar »

digitalmango wrote: post #59

Most of the Concentrated Solar Power plants uses molten salt to store energy. First was installed in 1995 (Solar ttwo) in Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project#Solar_Two

Torresol and other spanish companies have some experience with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torresol_Energy

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_st...

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#106

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #39
Retric wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are horrifically expensive relative to PV and largely abandoned tech. A core issue is you can’t concentrate sunlight on a cloudy day making them even less dependable than PV. The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility even reverts to natural gas, this is while costing 4x what PV does. PS: By abandoned the worldwide concentrating solar power installed over the last 20 years is ~1/2 the amount of PV added every month.

Spot on. I made a whole bunch of Solar Concentrator models and did a number of calculations on them. The work was probably flawed for very precise budgeting but order of magnitude should have been correct and even then it would not work, not even close. The best I found was a moveable array of mirrors and stationary collectors but this too is fragile and a maintenance headache. Leaks of working fluid and mechanical p…

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#107

Post by Retric »

7e wrote: post #69
Retric wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are horrifically expensive relative to PV and largely abandoned tech. A core issue is you can’t concentrate sunlight on a cloudy day making them even less dependable than PV. The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility even reverts to natural gas, this is while costing 4x what PV does. PS: By abandoned the worldwide concentrating solar power installed over the last 20 years is ~1/2 the amount of PV added every month.

There are plenty of CSP projects underway. See https://solarpaces.nrel.gov/by-status .

The list is ~25 locations even including 14MW power plants. Like: https://solarpaces.nrel.gov/dadri-iscc-plant but mostly it’s 50Mw. And that’s not what’s coming online this month or something they can take years to build.

By comparison 95,000+ MW of PV is installed every year. And PV has a much higher capacity factor so actual MW per year is even further in PV’s favor.

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#108

Post by gomox »

Bombthecat wrote: post #97

Just a question: why does a sub from Google need to raise money? I would question the confidence if a super big company starts something and is like: uh you know. We collect money from someone else.

For these industry-disruptor things you need some degree of support from the industry you're disrupting (i.e. you need to sell to utility companies that have strong business relationships with the large generation technology providers in the space). In practice this means raising money from, or partnering with, the right people that can leverage industry connections.

It is easier to get the right investors and partners if you are not controlled by Alphabet, because investors and partners have more assurances of the governance leverage they get for their money/effort. If you are Sergey's pet project, you are very vulnerable to mood swings on his (or Google's) behalf.

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#109

Post by gomox »

godelmachine wrote: post #102
Bombthecat wrote: post #97

Just a question: why does a sub from Google need to raise money? I would question the confidence if a super big company starts something and is like: uh you know. We collect money from someone else.

Same question - $26M is a small amount for Alphabet.

$26M from Alphabet for a power storage company is not "smart money", it's just a pile of cash. See my other comment sibling to yours.

Re: Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

#110

Post by 08-15 »

cerebellum42 wrote: post #76
garyclarke27 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks - funny how diesel locomotives stay iddling for hours, yet our diesel cars now turn off when stopped for just a few seconds - due to idiotic CO2 related testing and legislation. Result, a horrible experience of noise and lurching, often every few minutes in traffic, less responsive so less safe, more engine ware, all for zero fuel actually saved.

Start-Stop in cars does save a considerable amount, which is a fact that can easily be verified, so you pretty much disqualified yourself there with "for zero fuel actually saved"... The additional wear is not on the engine itself but on the starter components and those are simply designed for the additional load so that they can deal with the starts and stops.

A "considerable amount", huh? Can you please verify it for us and put a number on it? How much is it over the lifetime of a typical family car?
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