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ben_w | on: Solar power is becoming bigger than nuclear
My guess is seasonal will be handled with flow batteries. A big tank and cheap-ish electrolyte, with the expense being in the electrodes sized for whatever max power is required. Tanks good for multiple cubic meters worth of liquid storage aren't exactly difficult to find, nor to place in a garden.

Then again, I'm basing this opinion on a recent-ish video from NightHawkInLight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq7fR9ISuCw

pfdietz | parent | next
Flow batteries might be ok for a week or so, but their market window has been shrinking as Li-ion has gotten cheaper.

The technology I'm most excited about is ultra low capex thermal, as being done by Standard Thermal. Capital cost per unit of energy storage capacity as low as $0.10/kWh(th), so it can work with seasonal storage and just a few tens of charge/discharge cycles over its lifespan.

Standard Thermal has raised $11M and is building in Germany, where they say they can deliver 365/7/24 solar resistive heat (400 C or perhaps 600 C) for half the cost of heat from burning natural gas there.

cyberax | parent
Flow batteries keep coming up again and again, but they just don't work well in practice. The power density of electrodes is too low to be practical, and this is a fundamental problem.

A regular 18650 cell has about 0.1 square meters of electrode surface. And you have thousands of these cells in a car battery, resulting in literal football fields of electrode area.