Interesting Links for 16-03-2021

[andrewducker]

What You Need to Know About 'Roblox'—and Why Kids Are Obsessed

(tags:games children )

EU launches legal action against UK over serious Northern Ireland protocol breach

(tags:europe uk trade doom NorthernIreland )

Do Liberals And Conservatives Really Have Different Moral Foundations?

(tags:voting politics psychology )

Have some very impressive balance/acrobatics

(tags:impressive video )

Justice League's Snyder cut review: No longer Whedonesque—and all the better

(tags:movies DC superheroes review )

An impressive feat of engineering

(tags:engineering transport Netherlands video roads viaDanielDWilliam )

Scotland aims to build 100,000 more affordable homes

(tags:Scotland housing )

Beatings will continue until women know their place, confirm Met Police

(tags:satire police women UK violence )

Who wants to see a baby emu hatch?

(tags:birds eggs )

Yakko's World but Barack Obama Singing

(tags:barackobama world music mashup video viaSwampers )

Covid: UK vaccination surge expected in coming days as 10 million doses arrive from India

(tags:vaccination uk india )

Seasonal energy storage in aluminium for 100 percent solar heat and electricity supply

(tags:materials electricity storage metal )

Performance vs Trust (and why you don't always want the most effective person)

(tags:trust performance video )

Comments

Aluminium Energy Storage

[danieldwilliam]

Looks like the cost of the Aluminium energy store is getting is about 10-20 pence a kilowatthour. Which is a bit more than we're used to paying for winter heating with natural gas.

Mind you, you might get about the same overall cost for heating throughout the year as you'd be using direct solar PV & a heat pump for quite a lot of heating and hot water throughout the year.

I think rather than using individual unit per house this might work better / cheaper as part of a district heating scheme or in block of flats or an office.

Re: Aluminium Energy Storage

[andrewducker]

It does rather depends on the costs of hooking it up and maintaining it, doesn't it?

Using this for district heating sounds like an excellent approach to me.

Re: Aluminium Energy Storage

[danieldwilliam]

The component list has several components which are fixed cost (control software for example) and several items where I think the costs scale in a non-linear way for significantl larger scheme.

It's got district heating scheme writen all over it. In French and German and Italian.

Re: Aluminium Energy Storage

[andrewducker]

The big question, then, is whether it's cheaper to set up and run than using some batteries and leaving them charged for months until you need them.

Re: Aluminium Energy Storage

[danieldwilliam]

See my answer to Dewline's question.

And, difficult to tell in advance.

And another factor would be the cost of wind power which tends to be a little more synchronus with European demand. Or energy from waste schemes.

It's a very exciting time to be alive as an energy economist. Very exciting!

Re: Aluminium Energy Storage

[dewline]

Is that a bad thing, though?

Re: Aluminium Energy Storage

[danieldwilliam]

No, no at all. I actually think the fact that it's probably better suited for district heating might be an advantage when we consider the overall energy system costs.

Depending on how you build your 100% renewables grid you might end up having some quite expensive batteries doing very little. Charge up once in early autumn, discharge once in early spring. Or you might have extra long-distance HVDC cables running north-south that you only use the full capacity of for a few weeks of the year. Or you have an over abundence of solar PV so you balance your grid to supply peak demand rather than average demand and throw away power in the summer.

And some systems like this one might avoid some of those excess capital costs. So the individual systems themselves aren't the cheapest systems to run but they reduce the overall amount of power that other elements of the grid have to shift 3-6 months and cut the cost overall.

In which case there's a net gain to be had from providing some subsidy for these systems in some numbers. And that's probably easier to do if they are larger systems as part of shared heating system.

Re: Aluminium Energy Storage

[dewline]

Thanks much! This gives me additional context to think with!

[rmc28]

Love the video about performance v trust. Ties in with things like the No Asshole Rule and so on - unfortunately all too often being the asshole and good at bullshitting seems to get rewarded with promotions.

[hilarita]

Though I do worry that it ends up penalising non-assholes who are just a bit weird - i.e. people who are further away from the archetypical straight white cis man.

Justice League: Whedon v Snyder

[dewline]

I am inclined to leave it alone. I've seen Whedon's movie. Flawed as it was, more flaws revealed after the release, too, by some of the other people who worked on it...I'm done.

Keep the story moving, but move on from both Whedon and Snyder. Please.