Technology

Nuclear though, never had a problem with excess heat at one of those. /s

Nobody's ever died from a dam collapse.

As someone living in Texas presently: you could have saved yourself a full sentence:

This is a shitty Texas-based company cutting corners...

to

Texas company

or honestly:

Texas

Would be sufficient. Any Texan that doesn't own x texas-based-company is tired of that company's bullshit. It's one of the few things natives and transplants agree on.

This PSA brought to you by the makers of: y'all, you all, and all y'all.

You're right, but I think less dense but safer and more sustainable options are the better choice for this

A really strong elastic band.

Mechanical energy storage, like pumped hydro or flywheel. Thermal energy storage, like molten salt.

Electrochemical isn't entirely off the table either: less-volatile chemistries are available, and better containment methods can reduce risks.

Non-electrical chemical storage methods are available: electrical energy can be used for hydrogen electrolysis, or Fischer-Tropsch hydrocarbon fuels. Fuel cells, and traditional ICE generators can recover the energy put into those (relatively) stable fuels, or we can export it from the electrical generation industry to the transportation industry.

There's also avoiding (or minimizing) the need for storage at all, with "demand shaping". Basically, we radically overbuild solar, wind, wave, tidal, etc. Normally, that would tank energy prices and be unprofitable, but we also build out some massive, flexible demand to buy this excess power. Because they are extremely overbuilt, the minimal output from these sources during suboptimal conditions is more than enough to meet normal demands; we just shut off the flexible additional demand we added. We "shape" our "demand" to match what we are able to supply.

Build a tower, use excess power to lift heavy weights. Drop them when you need electricity to spin generators

Lifting your mom with a pulley.

Abandon the model of buying and storing electricity when demand is low and reselling power back to the grid when demand is high. Instead, electricity should almost always be generated in excess of demand with the difference going to hydrogen and oxygen production for various medical, industrial, agricultural, and transport applications. If we ever run out of storage, they can be safely vented to atmosphere.

back to water mills

Hydroelectric has grown up since then. See: hoover dam

No. And the petrol fires are many and ongoing in everyone's cars. Also large petrol fires are not always reported in the US. I can think of one specific instance that tho' a major fire, producing a wall of smoke, yet I could only find one news report of it's existence.

Also, are those battery fires more frequent // important than petrol ones ?

Petrol fires use oxygen from the air. They can be extinguished by removing the oxygen: covering it in firefighting foam, or displacing it with CO2, for example.

Batteries contain both their fuel and their oxidizer together in one case. You can't remove the oxygen. So long as they are hot enough, they keep burning, even if they are underwater. The only way to extinguish them is to remove the heat. Which is practically impossible.

How is a Megawatt not a measure of energy?

We shouldn't have either.

Per the AP, "There were fires at the Vistra plant in 2021 and 2022".