hydro electric

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I'll save you the bother. The energy storage capacity of a scaled up clockwork mainspring, even when Nitinol is used to get an eightfold improvement over the conventional spring steel alloys typically used in clocks and clockwork toys would fall woefully short of the target requirement.

If you're looking at wind up energy storage, you do much better with rubber bands[1] but even rubber band energy storage still falls far short of the requirements to store all of this free energy that has to go to unused by virtue of it being generated at inconvenient times of the day.

Quite. I was recently talking to a chap who'd bought an electric car five years ago. He got a range of 80 miles per charge when it was new, but it's down to 50 miles now. So those massive Tesla storage batteries, which are just thousands of individual cells connected together, will need completely replacing after say ten years at most, an even shorter life than the windmills and solar panels they're supposed to be supporting.

No - *or alternative source*. Should have given you a clue about context, too.

The alternative sauce is a nook like I said.

Go round the junk shops and by up all the wind up gramophones!

The alternative source is nuclear or gas. Energy from such sources is offset by excess supply (from the renewable source) when the weather is favourable - it all works on long term averages not minute by minute details. In the long term energy requirements can be met by renewables even if sometimes energy is being supplied to the grid by other sources.

Eh? Tell that to people in West Cumbria, not to mention the Fukushima province in Japan.

I'm pretty sure that road traffic is a much bigger problem in both places.

trust you to believe in a postion that is beyond any reality-based hope.

I think the barn idea is about lopping peak demand, similar to load-shedding, rather than being able to make up for any large shortfall when it's dark or not windy?

We did, but the scaremongers got there first.

In reality Fukushima area (excluding actual reactor site) is less radioactive than Dartmoor.

As is West Cumbria.

A bit less than that... 1.73GW and 9.1GWh capacity

Not quite, there is Foyers (305 MW, 6.3GW) and Ffestiniog (360MW,

Quite a good document here on storage:

In what way has it been a problem to people in either location?

Obviously. Was there a point?

Which, with a load of 40GW (see my earlier calculation) would keep the lights on in the UK for just....wait for it....40 minutes! Long enough to find the candles, Gaz lamp and matches, I suppose!

The trouble is that although Pumped Storage is generally accepted as a 'good thing', we haven't got the topography to implement it in any way sufficient to make a significant difference to stored energy relative to what's needed for an all-renewable supply, as table 5-1 on p. 15 shows. Adding up the capacities on the RH column (taking means where necessary and including a figure for Glenmuchloch of 1.7 GWh*), gives a total capacity of 136.8 GWh, which will keep the lights on for 3 hrs

But the monster and near-fantasy Strathdearn scheme proposed by the 'Scottish Scientist' would be more than adequate at 6,800 GWh**, except that it'll never be built!

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There's a scheme to run heavy rail vehicles up a slope to store energy.

Chris

In our case, where that Tesla system is, its actually there for the black starts.

Not 'nothing' IOW

Interesting, thanks - especially the exchange with 'Gilbert' - who worked on and studied the Scottish schemes - and concludes:

'It is not about have we the capacity to store renewable energy, we do. It?s about who pays for it and how much'.

Is that a change from how it was planned then? I thought it was to even out fluctuations (at the border between regional grids?) caused by too much reliance on wind power at times of no wind, and avoid blackouts rather than make black starts?