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Old 11-16-2007, 04:19 AM
microbet microbet is offline
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Default Re: Renewable Energy

ElSapo

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The biggest problems with solar and wind farms are economics, intermittent power, and the fact that no one wants them.

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I've been thinking about this a bit and thought that pumping water and then generating hydro power would be a good way to store energy when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. This process can be up to 85% efficient currently and I just discovered that here in Southern California there is a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant.

They pump water from one lake (Castaic) into a higher lake (Pyramid) at night and then generate power during the day when demand is higher.

Solar power could be added to the grid until it shaves off the peak demand and after that it could generate more power and as long as some was used to pump water into such a system it wouldn't cause the problem of too much power sometimes and not enough other times.

Castaic Dam wiki
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