| | | You could have near 100% by making variable cycle use instead. We need to take higher energy production processes (think cement, steel, chemicals, etc) and build excess plant capacity that is run as peaking level loads on the grid. The cost of doing this vs storage is that you build excess plant capacity, as it can't run 24/7, but the cost of the plant capacity might be way less than the cost of storage, and the consumption is at 100%, i.e. its the same as usage from the grid normally, there is zero "storage" loss.
But for that matter, as the entire vehicle fleet moves to electric, recharging the fleet should be done as a grid wide peaking cycle too.
For that matter, both for cooling and heating, in both residential and commercial, if houses were designed correctly, that too could very efficiently use peaking cycle energy. All you need is thermal mass in the structure, and the means of putting heat into and pulling it out of that mass. I've done this for years. My house and a large shop/office space I have both have thick concrete slabs with hydronic tubes and a circulation system. Despite living in an area that has hot summers, I don't run AC, instead, I cool the slab at night with a heat exchanger (our nights typically hit the low 60's even into the upper 50's in the middle of summer) then ride through the day based on good insulation and a lot of thermal mass in the slabs and walls (my house has concrete walls too). |
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