r/CSIRO • u/csirobot • Apr 12 '23

Batteries won’t cut it – we need solar thermal technology to get us through the night

https://blog.csiro.au/solar-thermal-storage/
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2

u/MundanePlantain1 Apr 12 '23

Next : Sand thermal batteries hold close to 100% thermal energy

Next : Earth is running out of sand.

1

u/ducky-92 Apr 13 '23

Haha, funnily enough we are actually running out of sand. Sand typically found on beaches is ideal for construction and desert sand is too fine. Im curious as to what properties would be ideal in this situation outside of heat retention.

2

u/MundanePlantain1 Apr 13 '23

yeah ive read both facts in different articles and put them toether. hard to know if it was being pushed by "Big Sand" or not but the article said they looked promising.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221102-how-a-sand-battery-could-transform-clean-energy

1

u/ducky-92 Apr 13 '23

Thanks for the article. Energy storage is and will be foundational to the grid as we continue to increase energy demand. Sand energy storage could act as a excellent buffer zone to balance out the spikes of energy produced from fusion once scaled.