Generally speaking, steam circuits have large thermal masses, resulting in ramp-up times measured in hours, so most thermal energy is nowhere close to "completely dispatchable". Completely dispatchable thermal power is internal combustion engines (diesel or Otto) and open-cycle gas turbines, and Standard Thermal is not targeting temperatures high enough to operate those machines. Adding Standard Thermal to a baseload coal plant will not make it dispatchable; you will still have a baseload plant, not a peaker. It just won't consume coal.
I agree that it would make solar usable in situations where it would not otherwise be usable, and high latitudes are a good candidate.
For reasons like these I do not think that they will result in a cost reduction.
Standard Thermal has been bending over backwards to store their heat at the high temperatures I mentioned, resulting in a lot of engineering challenges that a lower-temperature thermal store (say, 400° or below) wouldn't have to deal with.
For the most part, process heat is lower in temperature than 400°, so I think that isn't their market either.
Batteries would handle the higher frequency components of the supply-demand mismatch curve, so steam sources wouldn't have to dispatch faster than on an hours timescale.
I agree that it would make solar usable in situations where it would not otherwise be usable, and high latitudes are a good candidate.
For reasons like these I do not think that they will result in a cost reduction.
Standard Thermal has been bending over backwards to store their heat at the high temperatures I mentioned, resulting in a lot of engineering challenges that a lower-temperature thermal store (say, 400° or below) wouldn't have to deal with. For the most part, process heat is lower in temperature than 400°, so I think that isn't their market either.