Storing the energy of the sun in a new molecule

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The storage life potential is remarkable. It will be interesting to see if and how this develops into marketable products and solutions.
 
Yawn. Self-heating from 20 to 80°C suggests a large mass would be required for even a days worth of heat (think water storage tank)....and now are talking about tons of material for daily storage. Gonna be hard to compete with PV + storage + ASHP on price.
 
I've never thought of battery stored electricity as practical for home heating. 60ºC storage potential seems impressive and 110º is their goal, but I don't know the formula for storage potential. How do you calculate this?
 
Well the formula would be BTU ~ mass*specific_heat*Delta_T. Water tank heat storage works because specific heat of water is super high. Without knowing the specific heat of this new material, we can't really work any numbers here.

And you are right...PV+battery+ASHP is not economical in 2018. In some markets PV+net_meter+ASHP works ok, but obviously doesn't scale to the entire user base. I was just saying that I expect battery storage (esp utility owned and operated grid batteries) to get cheap enough for this to be a universal option....likely by the early to mid 2020s. IOW, before this new tech could really get a toehold.

Also....PV makes electricity which is infinitely versatile and fungible (but not so cheaply storable in 2018)...much more so than heat.
 
I'm not too sure about the economics of this. The linked story didn't identify the material used but the original study describes it as "a novel norbornadiene derivative." Sigma-Aldrich has a few norbornadienes for sale ranging from $136 per gram to a whopping $167 for 50 milligrams. I wonder how much it would take to heat a whole house?