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Gunluvver2 - the technology for storing gigawatt hours of electrical energy has been around and developed to high efficiency for almost 100 years. The technology is called Pumped Storage and is a reversible hydroelectric plant that stores energy as water in an elevated (typically 1,000 ft) reservoir. Excess electrical energy pumps the water uphill to store the energy and the pumps, operating as turbines, generate electricity as the water flows to the lower reservoir. These systems are 85+% efficient. The major requirement is topography suitable to build reservoirs 1,000+ vertical feet apart but near each other horizontally to minimize installation costs. The Blenheim-Gilboa project in the Catskill Mountains of New York and the Northfield Mountain project in Massachusetts are good examples.
Many areas with substantial wind and/or solar power have suitable terrain near enough for building Pumped Hydro storage plants.
FWIW – A underground concrete room with four 250 Megawatt motors and pump/turbines is a very impressive site. Too bad HS won’t let any one visit any more.
Gunluvver2 - the technology for storing gigawatt hours of electrical energy has been around and developed to high efficiency for almost 100 years. The technology is called Pumped Storage and is a reversible hydroelectric plant that stores energy as water in an elevated (typically 1,000 ft) reservoir. Excess electrical energy pumps the water uphill to store the energy and the pumps, operating as turbines, generate electricity as the water flows to the lower reservoir. These systems are 85+% efficient. The major requirement is topography suitable to build reservoirs 1,000+ vertical feet apart but near each other horizontally to minimize installation costs. The Blenheim-Gilboa project in the Catskill Mountains of New York and the Northfield Mountain project in Massachusetts are good examples.
Many areas with substantial wind and/or solar power have suitable terrain near enough for building Pumped Hydro storage plants.
FWIW – A underground concrete room with four 250 Megawatt motors and pump/turbines is a very impressive site. Too bad HS won’t let any one visit any more.
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Yes Greg pumped storage is a good solution under certain conditions. If I remember correctly the Grand Coulee Dam uses this method. What I meant is a method to store electricity on both a small scale and a large scale. In other words a battery than can be charged and put in your car and it will allow you to travel 500 miles without recharging. A battery capable of doing that that is affordable to the average guy would also allow generation of electricity and storage on a small scale. Our huge and complicated electric grid would become obsolete. Decentralize our electric supply in other words.
With it being New Year and all, I was just thinking about the future and how I'll quite likely live to see the day when oil reserves run out or at least become so expensive (say, $300+ a barrel in today's money) and wondered what the practical effects on everyday life will actually be.
I'm no science expert at all and a bit too hungover to think that clearly but the obvious one is making travel much more expensive - long-haul flights will become a luxury again as will big cars (already the case with our fuel taxes and road taxes here), transported goods will become far more expensive leading to high inflation. Plastics and perfumes will go way up in price as presumably will most energy bills, making modern, highly energy-dependent cities like Phoenix or Dubai unsustainable.
Lowering living standards would surely lead to major civil strife, but then again most nightmarish predictions of the future haven't come true like Fahrenheit 451 or 1984, or the scares about nuclear war or AIDS or the Y2K problem, so do you think we'll manage to innovate our way out of trouble this time?
Oil is a depleating commodity, it will run out. How fast? No one is saying but I would say, with the rapid development of third world countries, it will be faster then we think. Unless there is development of new enery sources in our lifetime, don't turn your horse out of the barn just yet.
a lot of american scientists discovered already in the last century differents strenthening .......but they have been ignored.....................just one es..Tesla
ahh H Ford did build his first car by marijuana..........and feed it with marijuana oil........obvious it was against the international oil company interests..
How can they win when there is no technology or system to supply energy on a mass scale?
The only possibility of running out of oil is when it is used faster than the earth creates it.
The earth is always creating oil. Do the Saudis ever talk of running out of oil?
First, we need to recognize the need to create a technology which will utilize solar and wind power. Assuming oil will continue to be here so we don't need to won't make that happen.
And what we pump out of the ground is the remaines of forests what grew during the age of dinosaures. The earth does not mass produce it. Wells are not going deeper and deeper to find it and beyond a certain point, the cost is going to exceed the value.
As for the Saudis, they have never acknowleged what their reserves are, but others have suggested they don't have as much as they like to claim. Since without oil its just a windy desert with a lot of poverty they wouldn't want to be spreading the word that they will eventually not hold any sway on the rest of the world.
What if every house was installed with solar on the roof, and it was hooked into a grid. I'll bet there would in the end by power to spare but the cost of installing it in the first place is so high. Make alternative means cheap enough and you'd see a different picture.
The cost of recovering any sort of resourse and the quality which determins its use is in the end the limiting factor to its viability. This will come with oil before its all 'gone'.
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