Posted on 01/09/2012 11:30:36 AM PST by bananaman22
Wind to Electricity... efficiency
is naturally quite low and not important. We really don't want to take 100% of the wind energy and stop all wind. We actually do not want to have a measurable impact.
What would be a meaningful comparison to pumped storage, which is electricity in; stored over time; electricity out to the same input output with a battery in the middle.
If that is what you want, I can search it out, but it it will not be close to pumped storage for efficiency.
10 to 1 that the "huge advances" that to which the author refers are in the form of govenment subsidies to constuct these boondogles. That would not be a "technical breakthrough."
Don’t stick your tongue across the terminals to test it.
What dwindling supply of fossil fuels? We have more known reserves today than we did 40 years ago. We have barely explored the ocean floor for coal and natural gas. We have just recently discovered oil at 7,000 feet below the deep ocean floor. Good G—! We keep hyping this ‘running out of oil so we have to completely retool and blah blah blah’.
Gee, I’m W-A-A-A-A-Y behind the times:
I had NO IDEA that A/C batteries had been invented, let alone G-I-A-N-T ones built! /S
Power companies have been doing hydro pumped storage for at least a few decades now. Georgia Power does it in Middle Georgia. The technology is well known, and I know they know the losses. I want to say the overall efficiency is in the 65% range.
They use it to run base-load nuclear and coal plants all night at higher load factors pumping water, then do peaking power with the hydro during the day.
And Wiki says 70% to 85%, so I was off a little.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
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