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Comment by rogerdpack | Hacker News Reader

Before getting too excited, realize this is for solar in Abu Dhabi, where umm...they get tons of sunlight as it were :) Though his other graph "predicts" that solar in more temperate climes will equal natural gas in "2020?" http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very...

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Another great thing about Abu Dhabi and solar is that they can use the extra solar power during the day to ramp up water desalination and store energy as clean water.

It is not exactly storage, just a vital use.

But it is an use of electricity which can follow the availability as the produced water can be easily stored which for the practical use comes close.

There's a lot of demand that can be shifted to high-power periods, basically anything that requires heat/cold. Modern insulation is fairly good and we do have a lot of liquids with a high thermal capacity. Generating warm water for buildings and cold coolant for aircons during peak power production would be technologically feasible, it just doesn't pay off currently since the power production curve is essentially flat (lot of base power with some peak added on top).

In the future it might also be interesting to move industries with high power demand to places with more solar power - electric arc furnaces, aluminum production, ... Some of those require a base load, but a lot of them can survive a few hours with limited power.

Aluminium production is already typically sited near hydro-power stations.

While I primarily agree, the problem from a more long term prospective is not intra-day balancing but between summer and winter. Every place that is not near to the equator gets less sun in the time of the year when there is more need for electricity. While there are some concepts with liquid salt etc., it becomes much harder to store such large amounts of energy for long periods.

Summer/winter is really not much of a concern in Dubai.

I wouldn't call that storage though, it's more of an efficient way of buying energy on a grid market.

I'd call it a battery.

You are storing energy in a form (cleaned water) for later use.

Unlike a manufacturer or other businesses which can't just hire people overnight/ramp up during the day.

I do agree the reversal process is convoluted and not really chemistry.

Sell the water = money <==> energy

That's not necessarily true, if you're the Sheikh and you own the power plants. You may have more money but you're still the only provider in town, and have fun cashing in energy when demand hits an external spike already.

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