[Retric]

> If your primary goal is thermal storage

The goal isn’t thermal storage the goal is to do something that needs extreme temperature.

You can’t melt steel at 500C, you can melt it in bricks at 1500C that then cool to 1400C. Use electricity to heat a brick to 1500C and you get 100C worth of energy storage. Use solar thermal to get to 1400C and you get zero energy storage.

[s1artibartfast]

I think that is kinda my point. These comments are all in reference to the idea of using these bricks for electrical storage, as an alternative of offset to other technologies like molten salts, batteries, or pumped hydro.

Im skeptical that they would be improvement on other forms of grid power storage.

This is independent of the question if they are good for melting steel.

I guess I dont understand the point you are advocating for.

[Retric]

The energy never gets turned back to electricity. It’s electricity > melting iron for steel (or whatever) and we’re inserting an energy storage in the middle because it’s effectively free.

The total energy storage is also unlikely to be huge so it’s more like load management not really grid storage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_management IE: Because we have energy storage and other users don’t we can cut demand when prices spike. Utilities will cut special rates for companies that allow the utility to load shed them first.

The same basic concept is common in other areas. Get enough storage for ~free such as with an EV and you can simply wait until prices get cheap before charging.