Could they not use the oil to power the giant fans?

with apologies to Ian . . . .

Four strong winds that blow weakly

80 fans that don't turn,

All those things that don't make electricity.

'cause we have so much oil

we can get it without toil

We don't need more useless Stinking Giant Fans . .

It's a good thing that the oil fields were still working. It's going to take a lot of oil to build more of those giant fans and the government plus the media seem determined that we're going to have to buy and erect them, all evidence showing it's unnecessary be damned.

The upside of the "dead in no wind" giant Don Quixote generators was that no wildfowl were being massacred on their way to nesting in Saskatchewan coulees.
Meanwhile that one lonely sucker on Toronto's waterfront is keeping Mayor David Miller's beer frig running.

I have drove thru the Pincher Creek Alberta area several times times this year and have seen the majority of windmills not turning everytime, it was very windy on those days. How do you turn a windmill off on a windy day?

How do you turn a windmill off on a windy day?
~kevanywhere

They were probably stuck, you know, in need of a little oil.

Karl: "Could they not use the oil to power the giant fans?"

...BINGO!

Not too pleased a few years ago when I found out we we're invested in wind power. F-Adviser "we are doing it for the 100% write off. As soon as the 2 year minimum hold time is up, will dump it. As long as the share value is still near the same, well worth while fore the tax credit."

Worked out ok, but was not that easy to unload. (too many are reading blogs instead of the G&M)

IOW, the Gov-ment takes your (tax) money, gives it to someone else (tax credit) to spend it on useless projects (wind power) so that others (Suzuki) look good.

On the serious side, there are now some 50 Giant Fans on the North end of PEI. That brings up the obvious question: Just how much electric power are they getting per fan? PEI's population is only around 90,000 and they need 50 fans? How many would Toronto need?
For the sake of this argument, I'm going to play Lawyer and pretend I can't do the math.

We've been working the last month and a half in the Fort McLeod/Pincher Creek area and have noticed the giant fans seem to be stationary as often as they are turning.

This hasn't been due to lack of wind but rather they appeared to be in the full feathered position. On one occasion we noticed a lot of activity at a nearby transformer station where a large repair crew was working but the rest of the time there was no apparent reason for the idle fans.

As you may know the city of Calgary makes a big deal out of the fact that the C-train system operates exclusively on wind generated power produced in this area. The windmill inactivity was so striking that we had a running joke going regarding angry commuters and traffic jams in Calgary as it seemed the windmills were hardly ever operating during peak traffic hours.

My suspicion is that maintenance issues and the complexity of integrating fluctuating supply into the grid severely limits the usefulness of these green icons.

Syncro

Karl for comment of the day!!!

There ain't no wind in them thar hills!

How do you turn a windmill off on a windy day?
~kevanywhere

If it is too windy the turbines have auto-brakes to lock the blades so the vibrations and friction from higher wind speeds do not destroy the turbine or start the tower swaying and the brakes allow for servicing.

The turbines have a safe operating wind speed. So instead of working better in really strong winds they do not work at all. Kinda self defeating technology, like sails, too little wind or too much wind you are in deep trouble.

As I have said before the Age of Wind Power did not end because we ran out of wind. Ages only end when you find a better replacement, Stone> Copper > Bronze > Iron > Steel ; improvements each time, yet we still build with and use stone, we still use copper for plumbing and electrical use, bronze is used for art and decoration, etc. We build on the last success, but only adopt it if it is proven superior and effective.

In the energy arena the royal family of electrical generation is Hydro is king, Nuclear is queen and coal is the Princess. Wind is the court jester and Solar is the Prince and heir, as soon as it grows up and marries the super capacitor he will inherit the Kingdom. In about 50 years. Until then we have to replace aged infrastructure with latest generation of the technology.

Nuclear and Coal power plants and even many Hydro facilities all over the USA and Canada are way beyond their planned useful lifespan, replacements or retrofits should have started to be constructed a decade ago, we would have been ahead of demand, meeeting safety concerns, they would be cleaner and have less emission and energy would be cheaper and GHG emissions would have been reduced already ( if you are one of the faithful CO2 haters ).

Environmentalists have crippled the Industrial Base of North America via crippling regulation and interference via legal challenges and delaying tactics on every form of Industrial Activity; basically causing the problem via past and current actions.

Energy = Wealth

They aren't turning because the House of Commons is on a three month summer break...

The fans will be turning again in time to keep them thar block heaters going this fall!

Perhaps if they could sit squirmy, jerky, perpetually upset, Ralphie Goodale nearby when he's on one of his rants.........

"How do you turn a windmill off on a windy day?"
~kevanywhere

If there is too much wind, there is danger of damage to the blades and the internal mechanism, so they are braked. At least at these times they are merely non-contributers to the grid. During the winter, when it gets very cold (not unusual in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta) they actually draw power from the grid so they won't freeze up. In a good year, a wind turbine will produce at about 35% of capacity. Some of that time, the grid does not require it, so in order to take it, another generator must be paid not to produce or, even more bizarre and perverse, in some jurisdictions, loads are paid to accept electricity.

Notwithstanding these concerns, wind is still the least uneconomic of the "renewables" that our elite superiors want to encourage - 8 to 10 cents a kW.h compared to about 4 cents for coal fired generation. Ontario is moving to a much more extreme position: electricity distributors. (eg. Horizon Utilities which serves Hamilton area) will be required to attach "renewable generation" to their grids and pay prescribed prices, for example, over 80 cents per kW.h for small photovoltaic operations.

Good thing the wells don't need the giant fans to operate.

I was amused today when the usual suspects on CTV pronounced Denmark a world leader in wind power....supplying 20% of demand.
Sophistry at best.
Wind is so intermitant that Denmark exports it's wind power to Sweden and Norway in a swap arrangement.
Sweden and Norway have massive Hydro generators (surplus) which can be turned off and on at will. Sweden also has a surplus of Nuclear.

Why can't many sources of energy be given credit?

The winds off and on the BC coast blow almost continuously; wind power can be stored. BC will utilize many sources of energy, including flowing water, wind power, oil, gas, the tides, and other forms of motion.

I've driven past Pincher Creek; it's beautiful to me. So are the windmills near Gull Lake, close by the area where I was born and raised.

I also love Alberta and its practical people, as well as the coast of BC, where I live now.

Some of you need to expand your minds, just a bit.

they say that a picture is worth a 1000 words well a picture with writting on it is worth 1 milion words ....and several billion tax paying dollars ....PMSH...has got to stand up for his beleifs he is pandering to the liberal masses out east and he shouldn't he should say what he really feel's ..and i will vote for him i want a right wing almost a hard right wing conservative ...to run this country ....not someone who walks on eggshells ...will PMSH...stand up for himself and this country ...will we get a majoriy conservative govornment .......I know they have my vote andi just hope that we can get a majority govornemnt in there to stop this wind powerless penniless greentard crap ..put the money where it should be back into the hands of the hardworking loyal taxpayers they are taking it from ,put it towards our militry ,put it towards the countries debt .....you know.

Paul.

they say that a picture is worth a 1000 words well a picture with writting on it is worth 1 milion words ....and several billion tax paying dollars ....PMSH...has got to stand up for his beleifs he is pandering to the liberal masses out east and he shouldn't he should say what he really feel's ..and i will vote for him i want a right wing almost a hard right wing conservative ...to run this country ....not someone who walks on eggshells ...will PMSH...stand up for himself and this country ...will we get a majoriy conservative govornment .......I know they have my vote andi just hope that we can get a majority govornemnt in there to stop this wind powerless penniless greentard crap ..put the money where it should be back into the hands of the hardworking loyal taxpayers they are taking it from ,put it towards our militry ,put it towards the countries debt .....you know.

Paul.

My Gerbil is getting really tired doing backup for those Huge fans. Call PETA!

When I asked "how do you turn off a windmill on a windy day" I already knew about vibration, brakes and maintenance. I wanted to know why 50% or more of windmills are not operating on windy days. To say it's too windy would only make sense if ALL the turbines were shut down.

I work in that area at least once a week. The fans are usually turning, but even on windy days, some are shut down.

To be fair and objective, on any given day, there are plenty of pumpjacks not pumping. A big chunk of my work is in the reclamation industry. I get to visit the sites that have run dry. Right now, there are about 10 times as many being abandoned as there are new wells.

I'll be an oilpatch guy until I retire, but I can see the end of this life on the horizon. Oilsands, offshore, coal. They'll be around for quite awhile, but the conventional oilfields that made Alberta so wealthy are almost done. I doubt we'll see another 20 years of exploration.

Hey dp, why'd you have to ruin things with a reasoned and considered response?

Can't you see people here are trying to rile themselves up?

Salvar- I agree with much of what I read here, but sometimes it helps to have a little background.

dp,

I hope you realise I was being sarcastic earlier.

I very sincerely wish that there were more posters like you on this site.

Thanks Salvar, but given time, I'll probably piss you off too.

"...why 50% or more of windmills are not operating on windy days"

It is a question of power balance. Electrical power sources must continuously match demand. Think of a simple generator. If the load on it increases, it starts to slow down. The power source (say, a diesel engine) starts to guzzle more fuel (works harder) in order to keep the generator turning at the necessary speed.

The problem is the time it takes for generating systems to adjust their output to track the load. Big old boiler systems (i.e., coal) have some flexibility to adjust demand on the scale of hours, given a "full head of steam", but not for long. Nuclear is effectively an unchanging output. Natural gas can adjust faster than coal, but is still boiler-limited. Hydro is faily quick at adjusting for load - say on the order of 10 minutes.

What the grid relies on is the averaging effect of the loads system-wide producing nice smooth demand curves that over-all can be accommodated by a few discrete large power sources.

Now, imaging adding just enough smaller sources all over the place whose outputs are effectively unpredictable. What they put in, some other source CANNOT provide. That is, you have to turn a big source down. This takes time...and money. Not worth it.

Now, the argument is that once critical mass is reached for these smaller sources, distributed over a wide enough area, that "on average" the production should meet demand ... provided that the grid becomes "smart".

"Smart" means the ability (among others) of the electricity provider to turn OFF your air conditioner, your hot water tank, or any other "smart appliance" to force the load to meet the source, rather than the other way around.

This is not a mere illustration. This is in the current plan(s) and actively being worked toward. Smart meters are step one.

chuzpahticular: Wind power can be stored? Has anyone really developed a battery large enough to store the energy needed to run a city? What is the cost of these batteries? What kind of resources do they require? How do you dispose of them when they are no longer useful?

I'm quite willing to be open minded about alternative sources of energy, but I'm not going to do it with my eyes closed.

The best way to store windpower is to pump water up behind a dam with hydroelectric generation. Batteries not included.

Speedy- A friend of mine had an idea that made sense. He wants to convert wind to compressed air, and store it in tanks. This could be done in small scale, or large. I don't want to give away his ideas, since he might patent them, but it sounded pretty interesting.

There is also the problem of trransmission capacity. If all the wind turbines are working, you need extra capacity in the power lines to carry that current to where it is needed.

And that is part of the problem. Our current power transmission system was not designed to handle new intermittent wind sources.

In fact, the system operators are looking at a big buildup to handle the normal growth of the conventional load and to accomodate the wind generators.

The people who operate the electric power transmission system in Alberta say $8.1 billion is needed over the next 8 years for critical infrastructure projects.

What that translates down to us consumers of electricity is another rate increase just for the transmission of the power we use.

The additional cost to consumers will be implemented in 2012 and reach about $8 per month by 2017.

Upgrades increase power bills

Add to that the cost of the giant fans, carbon sequestration schemes, and cap & trade fees, and pretty soon we are talking real money.

In theory, you could make hydrogen at the site of a windmill. I have no idea whether it would be economical to set up hydrogen farms, but the physics all work. I think that pumping water behind a dam or into storage towers to be release at the time of demand would also work. I just don't know how many of these ideas are ready for prime time.

The reason I thought of that is BC does it at Kitamat. They pump water up at off peak and generate power at peak. They were making more money doing that than they were smelting aluminum. We are talking millions of dollars. The unions were upset but when aren't unions upset.

Pump water back up ?? Why not just build the damn where the water will flow in naturally to replenish ?

However, the most efficient way to store windmill energy could be by lifting water.

Compressing a gas is hugely inefficient. Just think of the waste heat coming from your bicycle pump !

I just don't think the wind thing is all that it has cracked up to be ...that is my simple point i think there are far better uses of our money than wind power weather we shut them down soemtimes or what ever it is that we do ..to me it is a waste of money .....they should be built so they can survive a tornado so if it means we shrten the blades and build them better they should be up and running all day and night to generate power ,like the hydo damn in winnipeg it is better to have surplus go to waste then to not have enough and lose money ...remeber an airplane only makes it's money in the air ..not sitting on the ground for maintenance..that is why they are so well built .....anyway what do i know i am just a conservative from cowtown.

Paul.

correction i meant manitoba hydro ..not in winnipeg. sorry *

The question is simply how much does it take in hard cash to produce power via wind and can consumers shoulder the cost? It is my understanding that at this point almost all windfarms around the world don't make a dime and just consume mounds of tax-payer subsidies. If this is so, then in Canada they are no more than show pieces to make the greens feel good ... but at great expense.

If they are research sites, then there is some sense to subsidizing them.

Ron Limited storage capacity.

Love the pic; makes the point :-0

"If they are research sites, then there is some sense to subsidizing them."

Nope. The best research results come in places where the outcome matters. It's going to cost billions to transform today's wind technology into something that generates reliable electricity. Let someone else subsidize that.

When and if the day comes that we actually need it, we can then buy what we need off the production line for a fraction of the cost.

Most of the comments are on the right track. Wind power is definitely for the naive and gullible in fact this whole business of green is for the naive and gullible. Our Prov.governments from coast to are
totally lacking in due diligence and devoid of the
expertise required to run our power grids.
take a look at www.windconcernsontario.org and check out the links etc

dont let your friend give up his day job. yes. compressed air is hugely inefficient and very dangerous. water pumping is far more efficent and some hydro dams already purchase cheap power to replentish the reservoirs and then put it back in the grid at peak loads and peak money.

These turbines don't have to actually turn. Their mere presence allows the envirocrits to feel superior because they are "saving the planet".

Pumping water "up hill" is not new. But you would only be able to do that with existing reservoirs (read dams). If you think there are going to be any new ones built anytime soon forget it. Regulations, stake holder impacts, environmental assessments, and "UAE" style hedgemony and extortion would sink even the deepest pockets.

Also, wind subsidies just end up in executive pay, bonuses and stock options.

What water? What hill? What dam?

I worked on a project in Wreck Cove NS in 1974. They drilled a 20' diameter hole around 1500' at around 45 degrees, from a lake on a hill, to the Atlantic Ocean. It was designed to take up the slack during peak power cycles. The lake was drained through turbines, sending power to the grid at peak usage, then the turbines were reversed, and power from the grid refilled the lake during low demand cycles.

It was extremely expensive, extremely inefficient, extremely hard on the environment, and extremely high maintenance. Hydro electricity is only efficient if you already have moving water. In today's reality of environmental controls, I doubt that a dam would ever be approved. They've been fighting to build the meridian dam for decades, and it will likely never happen.

I suspect we'll find a way to store the power on the grid itself. Maybe it will be drawn off in some sort of capacitive discharge. What choice do we have? We have to make it work. Unfortunately, there'll probably never be a single source as clean and efficient as oil.

It does not make sense to have windmills "turned off" if there is not enough power usage and you have plenty of wind. Wouldn't it be cheaper to idle a fossil fuel powered plant and crank that up when demand rises? If that can't be done then what is the point of building turbines.

"what is the point of building turbines?"

Exactly. They are feel good sop to the green masses. Give enough money to GE to build turbines, and they will make sure that there wholly owned national network, NBC, as well as their sister cable networks, give you the kind of positive coverage, and omissions of the negative stuff, that you need to get re-elected. It is fascism, clear and simple, green fascism.

the only benefit of wind turbines is the gooes-pretension that they provide our public leaders and pro-environmental groups. Wind-turbines have been known to cause sleep deprivation, and headaches, they only produce power about 2/3 of the time and have to be peak-loaded with other power sources, most notably natural gas. So much for renewable energy. Why not nuclear, its the most important tool in rebuilding our energy infrastructure. Lets keep it Canadian and start investing in CANDU reactors. Check out the petition at pickcandu.ca

One little item that doesn't get mentioned much is the fact that almost all commercial windmills are built overseas. Most of them are assembled by German and other European workers.

One of the big selling points has been, they'll stop the huge transfer of wealth to OPEC. Well, building windmills isn't contributing much to local economies either.

Not one blade moving and yet still a blight on the landscape.

Illiquid - exactly!

Chuz - for the sake of your country and mine, we need to deal with the reality of life as it is not with how we wish it were.

Can we please stop pretending that fossil fuels and nuclear power are an ALTERNATIVE to renewable energy? Whatever your thoughts on the concrete timeline, both resources are extremely limited, so very soon we will have to switch to renewables. In the meantime nuclear energy will be a good transitional source (under certain conditions discussed here: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/011658.html#c400850 ), but it, too, will never be a solution, just a problem postponed (without maximal (and expensive) recycling of used fissile material, that resouce will be gone in about 100years if we were to switch to nuclear now).
Have you any conception of how long a complete change in the worlds power supply structure will take and how difficult that will be? Don't you think that it isn't extremely responsible to start this transition as early as possible?

And since there seems to be a lot of confusion about the technical side of the issue here, let me share a some technical details. This will take a bit of time and include some carrying of coals to Newcastle, but will show - I hope - that contrary to what many here seem to believe, energy supply based on wind, water & solar is entirely feasable, so bear with me.

Wind power.
While wind power is far less efficient then say, hydro power and wont be able to supply future energy demands on it's own, it is still sensible to invest in it, mainly because it is technologically simple and therefore cheap to build and operate. Plus it doesn't take up much space and isn't as dependent on geographical features as hydro power. But the future will lie in mainly solar, once we have developed solar cells that are cheap and efficient. Still, not everywhere will have enough sunlight to produce solar power efficiently, in those places wind & water will be the way to go.

Power grids: Someone already mentioned the need to balance out the changes in load. This is done by distributing the supply between different types of power plants:
- Base load plants (e.g. nuclear), that are generally cheap and highly efficient but only within certain narrow operating parameters and therefore can't follow load. They provide the energy that is always needed. Repsonse time is on the scale of hours to days.
- Load-following plants, that work during the day and switch off at night to even the daily change in demand. Large hydroelectric plants and smaller steam-turbine plants are of this type. Response time is on the scale of one hour.
- Peaking power plants, that are switched on or off according to peaks in power demand.

If you switch to renewables you effectively loose the base load plants and replace them with load following plants and peaking power plants, but ones with little or no way to regulate supply.
What you therefore need are efficient and largescale ways to store energy to do the load balancing that was previously done by the supply scheme explained above.

Storage:
Pump-storage hydroelectricity.
Contrary to what some here have said, pump-storage hydroelectricity is the best energy storage we currently possess, with an efficiency of above 0.8. Plus it is very fast and comparatively cheap.
Problem: Low energy density of around 0.4kWh/m³.
There are lots of such facilities around, the earliest I know of is the Koepchenwerk in Germany which was built in the 1930ies.

Pressure.
Someone has already mentioned this. Pump air into huge underground cavities, use the pressure to regain the energy when needed.
Efficiency is still OK at 0.5-0.6, energy density is 1kWh/m³ at 30bar. Also fast.
Problem: You would have to find and adapt suitable caves or mines, digging such enormous holes would cost too much.

Capacitators.
Like batteries, but smaller, more lightweight, very fast, don't break sp quickly. Efficiency is high, energy density is up to 1.5kWh/m³.
Problem: The loose their charge to fast, very short term storage (but very useful in electrical cars)

Magnetic storage.
Immensely fast (you get the power more or less instantaneously), can have very high power, fantastic efficiency of > 0.9.
Problem: very low energy density of only ~0.04kWh/m³

Batteries.
Cheap, high efficiency, don't loose their charge, enormous energy density of up to 2000kWh/m³.
Problem: Very short lifespan.

Hydrogen.
No loss of "charge", cheap, high energy density of 3-900kWh/m³, but
technologically difficult, not very efficient and quite dangerous.

Right now the best we have is pump-storage, but due to their geographical limitations they don't provide a solution if you want to change to renewables.
But there are many alternatives around, and by tailoring the storage method to it's application and by further development of especially pressure and hydrogen storage (as long as we're talking about energy on the power plant scale), the problem is not unsurmountable.

Addendum.

@dp: "Unfortunately, there'll probably never be a single source as clean and efficient as oil."

Err, solar? Look up how much energy reaches us from the sun per year and rethink. (or follow the link in my post above). Also, clean? compared to what?

Your problem is that renewables are not an alternative to anything. They are at best only small scale supplements to other things. Your comments on limited availability of fissile material is wrong. Both uranium-plutonium and thorium-uranium fuel cycles allow fissile material availability on a timescale measured in many millenia, not the mere century or so you suggest. Your claims of scarce availability are in any event contradicted by the OECD/NEA inventory of world uranium reserves.

So, to your hypothetical question of transitioning immediately to renewables solely, the answer is, no, it should never be done, because none of these sources, collectively or separately are remotely capable of providing the energy required on either the scale or the quality required. What you failed to acknowledge was that the efficiencies you claim for storage systems have to be added to the already highly inefficient generation systems. Quickly and cheaply? Don't make me laugh. Wind power alone requires double the concrete and triple the steel per MW of nuclear power generation, and we can multiply that by a factor of four when we take capacity factors into account. Or would you rather add in the energy storage costs instead? Makes no difference to me, because the renewables are losers on a materials and net energy basis in either case.

@cgh
Of course the available fissile material can my made to last much longer through the use of a closed fuel cycle (I don't know about millenia, but even some thousands of years qould be quite sufficient, I guess). However there are currently only 10 sites worldwide where nuclear fuel is recycled (in Russia, Japan, India (military installations I think), England and France), most nuclear plants operate in an open fuel cycle and there seems to be no trend to build more recycling plants. It is just too expensive, so the suppliers prefer to just dump the waste.

But OK, theoretically a complete, worldwide closed fuel cycle for nuclear plants could be an alternative to renewable energies. The costs of this, however would be similar, this option is not feasable for a lot of countries, the problem of nuclear waste would still be unsolved (although greatly diminished in scope).

HTRs have an efficiency of 0.43 and are to my knowledge among the most efficient nuclear plants in existence. Wind turbines currently are at ~0.5, hydro plants at 0.9, solar cells at max 0.4. Even if you factor into this the additional loss of efficiency through more intense storage (even our current system uses quite a lot of energy storage btw.) you hardly reach a point were renewables would be out of the question.

Especially not if you factor into the whole thing the incredible amount of energy available from the sun. The most important (supply side) factors thus get to be energy density and cost of production/availablility of materials.
Solar cells from amorphous silicium reach energy densities of 2kW/kg and the needed materials are overabundant.
The whole outlook for renewables will only get better with R&D. This is another reason to support renewables now, to encourage R&D and make them ready to replace the more conventional methods.
There is even work going on amongst the biophysicists/biochemists to create artificial photosynthesis to split water - the results are very encouraging. This alone could solve the whole fuel problem once and for all.
All this research will only get funded in a climate where there is interest in these technologies.

I personally think that nuclear energy is great, medium term and might even be the only way, again medium term, but in the long term not worth the hassle when there is such a much more abundant, cleaner and more elegant source available.
Another thing is money. Both, a completely closed fuel cycle and a switch to renewable energies, will be expensive. Both will result in higher energy costs in the short term. However I am quite sure that it will be much easier, politically, to mobilise the necessary support for this for renewables than for nuclear fuels.
And last but not least: Renewable energies are much better suited for a decentralized supply grid.

"transitionig immediately" sounds so harsh :-) . I say, start the process while there is still time left. Granted, that means now.
I'd start commisioning nuclear fuel recycling plants, HTRs, solar power plants, both electrical and especially thermal and loads of solar-power-related R&D like crazy, right now. Improve house insulation, efficiency standards for appliances, promote hydrogen cars and we have ourselves a party.

Grrrrr, another addendum. I'm getting forgetful.

You know the coolest idea to solve the storage problem? This is not a product of my mind, but a quite serious concept, albeit a bit sci-fi.

Get loads of electrically powered cars on the street. Equip parking spaces with power outlets to load their batteries (those would be needed anyway ones there are enough electric cars on the streets, IMO). Use their batteries to balance load.

(OK, this would really take some work, but maybe, at some point)

Interesting side thread on energy storage.

Compressed air might work, but as others have pointed out, it's not easy. The waste heat would have to be managed -- probably recycled to some degree of further productive work. Also, the pressures required for parity (w.r.t. potential energy per unit volume) for gasoline, for instance, are pretty high (understatement).

Water and height will work, but someone else pointed out that it's not without costs, as well. Probably the best benefit here is that the technology is already in place.

Projecting out into the future, my bet would be on hydrogen or nat gas. These fuels could be generated from feed stock (water and air), then compressed (insane pressures, as for compressed air, not needed). Energy could be recovered through consumption by fuel cells, providing for a smooth and controllable output.

I read somewhere that the Princeton (???) Tokamak (fusion test reactor) had neutral beam injectors that couldn't be powered directly from the grid. Instead, they siphoned power off the grid to get massive disks spinning. When the power was needed (in a short burst), they just tapped the flywheels. This might be a potential storage method, too...but the disks would have to be massive, and spinning very fast.

Using advanced molten salt technology, it might be possible to store excess energy in thermal masses, then use a steam cycle to tap it when needed.

Any others?

Re spinning disks, right, storing energy in motion, those I forgot.
No, I think we have them all together now.

I don't think thermal storage that get's tapped via steam turbines would work out. Carnot would limit the efficiency too much.

My bet is on capacitators for short term, hydrogen for small/large scale and pressure for large scale storage.
Unless of course we manage to produce hydrogen directly from sunlight...

Boy, there were some great ideas on this thread. I almost feel better.

I think the answer is combining all these great ideas into a single grid. Oil and coal could be kept in reserve.

@lcts: OK there's a lot to go through here from your last post. With respect to fuel recycling, the technology has already been demonstrated throughout the entire fuel cycle. In this particular case, its economy is dependent upon scale. Do it in the small batch lots required for the early prototype breeder reactors, and of course it's not economic. Remember, fuel is such a small part of the cost of electricity from nuclear power, that even a hundred-fold increase in the cost of the fuel cycle doesn't increase the cost of nuclear generated electricity very much.

Second, nuclear power requires far less infrastructure through its entire fuel cycle per kWh generated than does solar. This applies to both materials and land use. In the case of land use, it's by at least five orders of magnitude and in the case of materials, by at least one to two order of magnitude.

Third, you are underestimating the effect of a closed fuel cycle. Waste reduction is at least by two to three orders of magnitude; it's the fission fragments primarily. All having short half lives this reduces greatly the time horizon over which such materials must be secured.

Fourth, no the outlook for renewables will not get significantly better over time. All of their technical difficulties are related to requiring solutions in material science, and these come only incrementally at best. As I noted before, yes the sun has enormous energy output. There's no way to harness more than a trivial fraction of it; most of the photons are simply too low energy and the adverse environmental consequences of a huge application are immense.

Your notion of car batteries for energy storage is interesting. Here's the problem; the amount of power involved is so small that there's no payback on the capital investment for the infrastructure required. There's no payback now for residential demand metering, let alone a two-way residential electricity flow.

Not that it makes a huge difference to the conversation but the link provided states 17 turbines not 80 at the Sunbridge Wind Farm.

@cgh: I think we're are more or less on the same wavelength on nuclear. As you remember I already said that nuclear would be OK with a complete closed fuel cycle. As of now it is, unfortunately, not economic, mainly because uranium remains fairly cheap. I agree that recycling is necessary, I think it unlikely that it will be implemented.
I'd prefer even a "perfect" nuclear supply system to be replaced by renewables in the long term because of the remaining waste disposal problems, greatly reduced in scale as they may be (even after fully recycling everything you can, you still get left with a rest amount of materials of medium halflife, I think roughly 1% or a bit less of what needs to be disposed of now, but I might be wrong about that) and the fact that it is much less scalable and the technology is difficult and potentially dangerous - which means you wouldn't really want states like North Korea to draw their energy support from it, for other states it would not be feasible.
Nuclear could be the answer for Europe, the US, Canada, Japan etc. but never for the rest of the world.

Concerning solar, you keep saying that you can only harness a "trivial fraction" of the sunlight due to it's energy distribution. That is not true.
Plants use a sizeable portion of the visible part of the spectrum (everything except green, basically, which is funny because the maximum in intensity is in the yellow-green area). I don't see them having a problem surviving, despite the efficiency of photosynthesis of far below 10%.
As noted elswhere, gallium-indium-nitirde-based solar cells already offer a band-gap of 0.7eV (deep IR), so they use at least 50% of the energy (distibution in sunlight: roughly 52% IR, 44% visible, 4% UV). Using simpler materials (e.g. amorphous Si) trades of some energy harnessed for an almost unlimited simple & cheap supply of raw materials.
And no, it doesn't all hinge on material science. Semiconductors aren't the only way. Look up the work of for example Stenbjörn Styring of Uppsala University on artificial photosynthesis.

Re car batteries.
OK, this is of course quite hypothetical.
The infrastructure would already be mostly in place - somehow you will have to recharge your cars. As to power, this would of course be a highly decentratlized system with very little power per unit, but the total power storable would be immense. It would do away almost completely with other energy storage systems and there would definitely be some payback involved in that.

But I think neither you nor I can judge how the cost etc. would play out for this idea. I think it'd be feasible, but I at least have no way of knowing.

The wind was blowing.

The windmills wouldn't spin because there were too many dead birds jammed into the gears.

Mazzuchelli, I'm dealing with reality. I personally know a company owner who builds windmills for small businesses, and someone else who is involved in the development of gigantic windmills which will operate off the coast. Scoff if you want. Rome was not built in a day. BCers have always been ahead of the wave:)

Being originally from Sask., I remember the days when oil derricks in farmers' fields were considered a BLIGHT on the horizon:)