this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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I like the system where the excess power is used to pump water into a reservoir up a mountain and when power is needed it runs it down a turbine into a lower reservoir.
Most places where this can be done, it is already being done. The low hanging fruit for pumped hydro was all picked decades ago, and at great cost to the ecosystems it destroyed in the process - turns out that drowning thousands of acres in massive man-made lakes had a bit of an impact on the plants and animals that lived there.
Not saying that the benefits weren't worth the cost, that's a whole different debate. But there's little to no opportunity to scale this energy storage tech beyond it's current footprint.
Just make a tall and really skinny lake.
What if we filled space elevator shaft with water :o
/s just in case
Yea there are plenty of ways to store energy using things like gravity as a battery. The crap saying we can't handle the extra energy is BS. We won't, cuz money before planet, but we 100% can.