In Friday, Heinlein postulates a megacorporation based on a power source — in this case a “Shipstone” (named after the inventor) that’s capable of powering houses indefinitely. Everyone wants one, of course, and since the corporation won’t divulge the thing’s secrets and it’s apparently impossible to reverse-engineer, the company has monopoly power and gets incredibly big selling them to everyone on the planet at whatever price the market will bear.
Well, it’s not the same thing as a Shipstone exactly, but if I had a pile of money sitting around, I’d buy one of these in a heartbeat:
A new type of a room-size battery … may be poised to store energy for the nation’s vast electric grid almost as easily as a reservoir stockpiles water, transforming the way power is delivered to homes and businesses. Compared with other utility-scale batteries plagued by limited life spans or unwieldy bulk, the sodium-sulfur battery is compact, long-lasting and efficient.
Guess I’ll have to make do with lesser fare for now. Hurry up market, drop those prices!
Unless I am mistaken, the big problem with NaS batteries is that their operating temperature is fairly high – as in >200*F.
Another drawback I can see is that any building with one of these inside becomes an instant hazmat site in the event of a fire or other major-damage causing disaster (earthquake, tornado, etc)