Electricity Storage | |||||||||||||||||
Why don't we store electricity in the form of potential energy?If power is being generated(form ANY source be it coal/wind/oil/atomic etc etc)& there is excess power being generated could not that power be "stored" in the form of potential energy by a/pumping water to a height that can be used later to produce hydro electricityb/lifting huge weights that could later be lowered under controlled conditions to generate electricity.c/???must be more surely.Wind/wave/solar/tidal etc etc power sources are not certain to be continuous but if they were all used & pooled together to make electricity for the here & now & to store the excess surely the supply would then become reliable.I could imagine a "bank" of electricity just sitting there in the form of potential energy that would allow a big safety cushion over any temporary fall in immediate supply.
BJC, Sep 11 2008
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This is an excellent idea. However, others have long since beat you to it. Pumped-storage Hydroelectricity.
This idea would address the problem of solar energy. The problem being that the sun shines only during the day and in order to have energy at night it has to be stored from daytime, and kinetic storage of water would address this. They haven't adopted solar power yet for public energy because of not having a good storage medium, and also the high cost of solar panels. But to lessen the cost people instead use wind energy, which has lots of funding now, and has the same problem of not always creating constant energy reliably. But the storage of kinetic energy, until we invent other storage mediums, is a good idea, if it is cost effective.
Hydro storage is used. At night when use is idle, water is pumped to the top side of a reservoir, and released in the day when demand is needed, through a more or less traditional hydro station.
The current favored paradigm for solar electric is similar.In the daytime, (excess) solar electricity is fed into the grid to lighten the loads of traditional all-time plants, and at night the consumer draws their power from the plant, which is less loaded because some commerce and industry are off-line for the night.