Energy storage, cheap and low tech.

[Redneck in training]

I wonder if he'll ever recover his cost for all that rigamarole. Likely not. Smart? Maybe not so smart after all. Just because you can doesn't mean you should or that it makes any sense or cents.

I know people who bought 60 000 dollars truck as daily driver to work. Show me a 60k daily driver making 300 a month. In fact it costs probably more than 500/month in fuel, insurance and financing cost. So we drive our used cars and have 36k PV system that saves us 277 USD/month in electric bill cost. It will take 16 years to break even if you want to know. It seems long time but after 16 years it will still produce energy while the truck owner will have pretty much worthless piece of junk he sank huge amount of money in for questionable "fun" to drive thing. How smart is that? Well , I should stop being sarcastic. We are guilty of such thing too. Our house way too big and has way too many bathrooms for two people, not speaking about my wife's closet. :banghead: Fortunately in our good old USA we can buy (smart or not smart) what we want but not necessarily what we need. I rest my case.

 

[Redneck in training]

In order to supply electricity for Canada and the US with pumped storage. It would require pumping the contents of all five Great lakes uphill into some reservoir. Where is the reservoir ?
Any body see a challenge in logistics? The amount of solar panels, the size of a dam, how many trains up how many mountains. The efficiency would be about 80-85% pushing the train uphill and approx 80-85% generating power on the downhill trip. That is loosing 30% of the power generated.
How much solar and wind power will be required considering those losses and to make up for days without solar or wind generation?
Are the environmentalists going to approve building dams and flooding land ?

Pumped storage works well on large scale but lifting mass can be scaled from mini to mega. I think.

 

[CalG]

In order to supply electricity for Canada and the US with pumped storage. It would require pumping the contents of all five Great lakes uphill into some reservoir. Where is the reservoir ?
Any body see a challenge in logistics? The amount of solar panels, the size of a dam, how many trains up how many mountains. The efficiency would be about 80-85% pushing the train uphill and approx 80-85% generating power on the downhill trip. That is loosing 30% of the power generated.
How much solar and wind power will be required considering those losses and to make up for days without solar or wind generation?
Are the environmentalists going to approve building dams and flooding land ?

These comments are fatalistic. This thread has to do with balancing the generation and consumption of energy, NOT supplying it in the first place.

No great lakes reservoirs are needed with the present situation.
Still, there are locations that suffer "brown outs" that just "might" be alleviated with reserve generation capacity. Such as using the off peak surplus capacity to be reclaimed in time of need.

 

[orezok]

There is a plan in the works to take the old Kaiser Steel iron ore open pit mine out in the desert and turn it into a pumped storage power generation plant. Pump the water up at night when rates are low and make power during the day when rates are high. It's plan is to make 3,500 mega watts. It appears that it is going to be a reality

 

[reb]

...after 16 years it will still produce energy...

If it hasn't failed in the meantime. I wonder about the long term reliability of the PV panels and the support electronics.

 

[CalG]

Pumped storage works well on large scale but lifting mass can be scaled from mini to mega. I think.

Even a "water tower" sized installation could suffice for small scale energy storage. Water is mass,..... 1000kg per meter^3

 

[Redneck in training]

In order to supply electricity for Canada and the US with pumped storage. It would require pumping the contents of all five Great lakes uphill into some reservoir. Where is the reservoir ?
Any body see a challenge in logistics? The amount of solar panels, the size of a dam, how many trains up how many mountains. The efficiency would be about 80-85% pushing the train uphill and approx 80-85% generating power on the downhill trip. That is loosing 30% of the power generated.
How much solar and wind power will be required considering those losses and to make up for days without solar or wind generation?
Are the environmentalists going to approve building dams and flooding land ?

The power grid had stability issues from day one. That is why we have street lights whose original purpose was to provide night load for the generators. So any energy storage can be used to even out generation/demand discrepancies. In fact if electric cars become ubiquitous they could serve such purpose while plugged in.
There were dreamers 100 years ago saying that one day we will have electric power more or less to every object in the USA. They were told it can't be done. But we have electric power more or less to every object in the USA. We also have several hundred million cars in operation. And those have to be replaced just about every 16 years. So if that can be done somebody will make energy storage on such scale. The technologies exist. It is just matter of cost.
I am currently working on a power station under construction. It is about 18 month late, not even close to be finished and about 100% over budget. It is clear to me that after it is all done the owner of the plant will ask for rate increase. Couple more of those and wind, PV or what ever new will show up will be cheaper than power from coal or gas.
In fact the utility that supply power to the grid my house is connected to (The utility is hostile to residential solar) just signed a contract to build 200 MW PV generation plant in phase one and wants to build two more of similar size sometime later.

 

[Redneck in training]

If it hasn't failed in the meantime. I wonder about the long term reliability of the PV panels and the support electronics.

The panels have 20 years and the inverters 25 years warranty. The experience with system in operation for long time would suggest that it will most likely last that long.

 

[CalG]

warrantee is just another cost.

PV installations have no better track records than does wind. And look where that has gone.
Cost of upkeep exceeds returns.

Your tax dollars at work!

 

[MossRoad]

...Rail and rolling stock requires maintenance. ....

Yep. However, this is slow moving, so its got that going for it.