> They can't package solar-harvested energy and export it to China
Essentially that's what aluminum refining from bauxite does.
It's also not impossible to build long distance transmission lines that far, but that's a big infrastructure project across an unstable region and the highest mountain range on earth.
Maybe. You have a massive capital outlay, so it becomes a tradeoff between saving money on electricity by running only when it's below a certain price and running all the time.
Usually electricity cost doesn't dominate the equation, so it makes sense to run 24/7 (or as close to that as you can get).
Aluminium refining is different, but usually those plants buy dedicated electric capacity from a hydro station at special wholesale rates. It does not lend itself to starting and stopping.
AFAIK, aluminium smelters would have significant issues if their pots overly cooled. OTOH, their massive energy consumption can be significantly modulated which is often used for grid load stabilization.
I've never heard of this as a viable economic way of storing solar power. Don't those aluminum forges have to run 24/7 and starting/stopping them is a huge pain in the ass?
I don't think they mean this as power storage, rather, shifting the location of power usage to the place where power prices could be ridiculously low. Smelting bauxite is an energy-intensive process. If you do it in China, you need to import the energy to do it. If you instead send bauxite to KSA they could use their cheap energy and send the resulting aluminum to China.
It's not storing the energy, it's making energy storage and transport a redundant step.
Yeah, it is a pain with all smelters currently in use. There is maybe an alternative deign that could change that. But the idea here is not to store the energy, but to export it as chemical energy via aluminum.
Not so much storing, as exploiting the locally-cheap energy.
Canada for example, was and still is, a major destination for bauxite ore. There are large hydroelectric dams in Quebec dedicated specifically to aluminum smelting.
Essentially that's what aluminum refining from bauxite does.
It's also not impossible to build long distance transmission lines that far, but that's a big infrastructure project across an unstable region and the highest mountain range on earth.