Finland has inaugurated an industrial-scale sand battery this week in the southern town of Pornainen, where it'll take over heating duties from an old woodchip power plant for the municipality. It's set to reduce carbon emissions from the local heating network by as much as 70%, and is the largest…
Language is funny sometimes. Battery used to refer to a collection of individual electric cells, ‘a battery of cells’ that worked together to supply the required voltage. Old cell tech was such low voltage, that several cells were required to juice itself to practical voltages for working purposes. Here the word was a mot emprunté - borrowed, from the military where battery was a term to describe a functional group of artillery that worked together for improved function. The military stole the old french term battre, ‘to beat’.
Eventually “battery” evolved to mean electric power storage device regardless of cell construction. Now apparently it also includes thermal charging, storage and discharging, even when only a single cell.
Language is weird. The proper term would be accumulator, but weirdness reigns supreme.
IIRC Battery also used to refer to a collection of cannons
Uh, didn’t I just say that? Lol
The thing is, it didn’t evolve that way. Battery is a technical term with a defined meaning. Colloquial use by people ignorant of it cannot change the technical definition, because technical definitions are not set colloquially like most language is.
Saying it evolved that way is like saying “windmills” generate electricity. The term is wrong, and anyone doing anything meaningful in that industry knows they’re not mills, they’re wind turbine generators, or turbines. People might know what you mean when you use the wrong term, but that doesn’t make your term in any way correct.