this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Yes in a scenario, which you are in a cold climate which it is always cold outside. Then yes, thermal energy storage would be an extremely efficient option.
It doesn't apply to most living humans but I grant you that special case.
yes, I did look at your link and noted all of sites are those near mountain ranges; which I certainly grant you is near (within 100 miles of) most human population centers.
I'm not sure I follow why this is an edge case. Space heating indoor areas with surplus wind energy stored in september-november when it peaks is the absolute largest block of inflexible demand for >100 hour storage. With PCM or suitable risk management of high temp. sensible heat it represents the plurality of potential storage demand.
Batteries may still win due to flexibility and prevalence of solar, but I can't think of a better use case for thermal storage.
It's also probably the oldest storage tech by about 8000-100,000 years
heating is not done year around (365.25 days/year) for the majority of the world's population.
Hence why places which need heating year around are generally considered an edge case.
(i edited above accidentally hit enter too soon)
Long duration storage isn't used year round. Charge with wind in autumn->don't burn stuff during jan/dec or dunkelflaute isn't an edge case, it's about 10% of all energy and the only real use case where renewables absolutely need LDES.