Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
...Grids simply can't store power: you basically need to produce energy when it's needed.
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Physical storage, this is correct. A grid is just like a set of roads, not a parking lot. However with the above concepts I listed (namely swingy power plants), you can "effectively" store power. But in your later points, storage locations are certainly a way of the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
it could never be anything more than supplementary source for a city like Calgary.
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True. And never will be more than that really. You just can't have a swingy power source be the main one on a grid. I'd say a safe limit is 20% of production.
Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
In the next fifteen or twenty years, there will be massive changes to the way that power is used on a grid, and we should start to see what are essentially power batteries, especially in grids that use a lot of solar or wind. Some of these are really cool technologies, like where a wind farm can use it's surplus energy to pump compressed air into a reservoir such as an empty gas well. And then when there's no wind, the compressed air is released into special turbines which generate power; if even half the energy that was currently lost within the grid was captured and stored and turned back into power when needed, the increased efficiency would be more significant that decades of solar power advances.
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As I said above, this is a very good concept and the way grids will look as swingy sources (wind, solar) become more prevalent.
The nice thing about solar is that it has a very small ongoing variable cost (solid state pieces mean no friction, no one needs to operate them, etc.). They just require an initial capital expenditure to install them. After that, power is virtually "free".