Here's another idea: Install a giant flywheel (which can store energy). This would be spun up following installation and then kept running permanently by solar power during the day. Then, come nighttime, the stored energy could be used to drive a generator.
MM
Already been done....
MM
... and they can only run it when Coronation St. isn't on......
But only rotates at a couple of hundred RPM. Mind you if it did fall off its bearings it would make a helluva mess of everywhere it went.
Flywheels, for energy storage, are seriously nasty if they escape containment is pretty difficult...
But not as nasty as the 'Chernobyl' kind of alternative!
If the flywheels were mounted so that the axle is horizontal, then if they faced the sea and were rotating in that direction the worst that could happen would be a big splash and some frightened cod.
MM
Before the JET project, there was a smaller flywheel at the nearby Rutherford Lab, which also stored energy for a pulsed particle accelerator.
That one did have a horizontal axis, and was carefully aimed so that if ever it did break loose, it would head out across farmland and then up a hill. I don't know if anyone ever calculated how far up it would go... but if it had ever cleared the top of the Berkshire Downs and started to accelerate, we could have had a Newbury Bypass several years early.
Just had an idea to minimise a wildcat flywheel's progress: Make it from segments that have explosive charges fitted, like an air bag. Then, as soon as it broke loose, the charges would detonate automatically at predetermined points (like the ring-pull in a beer can), thus transforming the wheel into a heap of iron.
MM
"Dear Householder: If you see a flywheel coming out through the power station wall, don't worry in the slightest. Before it reaches your home, it will safely explode."
Next thing, you'll be asking people to drive around with explosives in the steering-wheel!
They do. It's called an air bag :-)
You could use it to pump water up to reservoirs.
Using carbon fibre flywheels in a vacuum inside a car is still being looked at. Surplus energy, like braking can be used to turn the flywheel. They are used in satellites in which the solar panels turn the flywheel and the flywheel provides enough energy when on the dark side of the earth away from the sun. Problem is that they spin at around 60,000 rev/min
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