Winter solstice in Edinburgh.
Sunrise was at 8:42am: Sunset is due at 3:39pm, for a total of 6 hours and 57 minutes of daylight.
(Meanwhile, over on my blog comments earnest Australians keep trying to convince me that solar power is the solution to all our energy needs. Hint: up here, demand peaks at night—for heating—not during daylight hours for cooling.)
@cstross I think giant batteries to stick the wind into are more immediately interesting.
These guys seem to have the best tech for municipal container batteries:
It's iron, road salt, water, and vinegar in a bunch of PVC pipes. It's all 1970s tech. Their patents are all around special filters (clever but still pool/aquarium level of complexity) that take it from a few hundred cycles to "the plumbing wears out long before the chemistry does".
@robryk @cstross does an hour-long interview with the CEO talking about the technology count? https://youtu.be/LPm3fgxbgg8
@robryk @cstross I suspect there was some due diligence along the way to going public? https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/11/ess-battery-company-backed-by-bill-gates-softbank-opens-on-nyse.html
@robryk @cstross Odd. It shows up for me: https://mstdn.jp/@landley/109551851654546174
@robryk @cstross There's a bunch of container battery companies like Ambri and Form Energy that never shipped anything, which I consider basically scams. (Ambri gave a great 2012 ted talk but they've been wrestling with their tech for a decade: molten antimony is STUPID.)
These guys have actual customers and their website has actual numbers for products you could buy today: prices, capacity, charge/discharge rate, weight, efficiency, etc. They're building factories in spain and australia.