Top all-time · #10802
Austin Vernon
Personal blog · austinvernon.substack.comeconomicsbusiness
Austin Vernon's personal blog at austinvernon.substack.com covers economics and business. Since 2025, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times, most often “Building ultra cheap energy storage for solar PV”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Austin Vernon's posts on thermal energy storage, such as storing heat in large piles of dirt at about 600 C, as a reference for grid storage and energy-cost arguments.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Energy, technology, defense. Long posts are at https://austinvernon.site.
Most-linked posts?
- Building ultra cheap energy storage for solar PV4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-08-20
- How Rockefeller and His Partners Built Standard Oil2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-05
What Hacker News says?
Hydrogen or heat. The former would be stored like natural gas currently is stored, underground. We store months of natural gas consumption. Heat (at 600 C) is potentially even cheaper to store, with a cost of storage capacity as low as $0.10/kWh(th) of capacity. This could yield 365/24/7 heat for $3/GJ, competitive even with cheap natural gas. https://austinvernon.substack.com/p/building-ultra-cheap-ene... https://s…
Comment linking /p/building-ultra-cheap-energy-storage
on “EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy”Submitted Building ultra cheap energy storage for solar PV as a story · 99 points
HN discussionThat's what they're focusing on to start with, but the temperature is high enough to drive heat engines to make power. There's more on the concept at the seed company's (Orca Sciences) web site and at Austin Vernon's blog. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal https://austinvernon.substack.com/p/building-ultra-cheap-ene... They talk about temperature up to ~600 C, which I believe is limited by the d…
Comment linking /p/building-ultra-cheap-energy-storage
on “Solar power is becoming bigger than nuclear”Submitted How Rockefeller and His Partners Built Standard Oil as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe place I saw this most clearly described was in Standard Thermal's concept, which will store the heat in huge piles of dirt heated to 600 C. The thermal time constant of such piles can be many years. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy https://austinvernon.substack.com/p/building-ultra-cheap-ene... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45012942
Comment linking /p/building-ultra-cheap-energy-storage
on “Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?”Submitted Imagining the Drone Air Force as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> he bet nearly all of that money on SpaceX and Tesla, and that's why he's a billionaire There's a survivorship bias occurring too. You see the same selection going on with huge commercial real estate winners: they keep doubling down and the majority eventually fail out. You see only the winner, not the failures. “Keep rolling till you crit-fail.” Lots of successful businesses like Nvidia or Standard Oil have a simi…
Comment linking /p/how-rockefeller-and-his-partners
on “SpaceX launches Starship megarocket on 11th test flight”Submitted Building Ultra Cheap Energy Storage for Solar PV as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building Ultra Cheap Energy Storage for Solar PV as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Speed Can Reindustrialize America as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
