02-17-2014, 04:22 PM
cbelt3 wrote: The other big problem is storage. This is the real elephant in the room. The sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow, rivers ice over, tides are sometimes big and sometimes smaller. Your generation capacity needs to be significantly higher, and your storage capacity needs to be huge in order to maintain grid demand 24/7.
I've thought this too. The problem is that people always think of the energy storage in terms of cost thinking of conventional power generation systems. With renewable systems the storage can be incredibly low-tech and inefficient. I've often thought that wind turbines should be connected to pumps to compress air, pump water into an elevated tank, or lift massive weight into the air. Then, when the power is needed just release the water, drop the weight, open the valve...and collect the potential energy. The advantage of this is that it is a KNOWN quantity of energy that will be producing for a known quantity of time.