Molten Salt Energy Storage

In response to my recent piece on solar thermal and molten salt, a reader admonishes:

You assume that “molten” salt is universally available over the entire power grid? Get real!

Apparently, I’m not describing this as clearly as I thought I was. As shown in this diagram on molten salt energy storage these devices wouldn’t need to be universally available over the entire power grid; units are located within solar thermal farms to store energy for distribution back onto the grid during the hours that the sun is not high in the sky. In other words, it’s part of the power generation plant, like a subsystem within a coal or nuclear plant.

Having made that clarification, if you’re referring to the expense of the migration to renewables in general — or to molten salt energy storage in particular, you have a point; I can’t say that this whole process will be cheap. But I do believe two things:

• This is the least expensive (and most secure, reliable, and scaleable) alternative, and

• We literally do not have a choice.

I don’t want to come off as an alarmist, but I do not believe that our civilization with survive the run-up of oil scarcity that it inevitably faces — not to mention the long-term environmental damage associated with consuming 100 million barrels of oil a day — until we run out.