With the change over to renewable electricity we are getting too much electricity
Hopefully in the long term it will lead to cheaper power. Plug in your electric car now 
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the benefits of having a big country with a small population. Iām guessing it can be stored?
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Did you mean āStoredā or āSortedā Annie?
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stored for use later
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Storage of electricity is in itās infancy Annie, and relies on huge lithium battery storage facilities that are pathetically poor, and very expensive and dangerous.
They are proposing the building of one here near me, it will be the biggest such facility in the UK and possibly Europeā¦It will store enough electricity to supply 800,000 homesā¦
But this figure varies whichever article you read, and in the info we received, it stated that the supply to 800,000 homes would be for 1 hourā¦
Thatās assuming the wind and sun have been kind and fully charged the facility.
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Dinorwig Storage Power Station is pretty useful.
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Prior to her TV career, a young Carol Vorderman worked there, as a Civil Engineer. But unlike batteries,Dinorwig is designed to give a very short burst of energy.
Looking at the pace of construction of the massive data centres needed to power AI there will be a significant shortfall in electricity everywhere.
Extract - This tiny area alone, Loudoun County, consumes roughly 4.9 gigawatts of power - more than the entire consumption of Denmark.
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Roughly 14 hours is the operation is the energy consumed up the hill and 10 hours is the energy down the hill.
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A lot of power?
Closing down coal fired power stations in Australia usually means the site will used for a large storage battery especially since the success of the SA battery
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Hydro Electricity is not actually storing electricity. Itās storing or using flowing water to power turbines that generate electricity.
Itās like saying that coal or a tank of gas is storing electricity.
And 10 hours of electricity from Hydro, far outweighs the storage capability of even the largest lithium battery storage facilityā¦Doesnāt anyone in the government ever do any mathsā¦ 
Mind youā¦why should they, because itās the general public that pays for these pie in the sky projects.
That is not true, Australia has been using pumped Hydro for many decades. You pump water from the bottom of a hill to the top of a hill (used to be at night) and store it in a specially built dam, then you release that water during the day to generate electricity. You recover about 80% of the energy used to pump the water up hill.
It is far cheaper to do this than to stop a boiler/generator then spent hours burning oil to bring it back on line. Solar has rather turned this on its head because now there is too much electricity during the day but the same principle applies
Did you not digest my post Bruceā¦?
You pump water to the top of a hill, but you are not storing electricityā¦You are storing the means to produce electricity.
Lithium battery storage actually hold on to a charge of electricityā¦
[quote=āBruce, post:12, topic:109295ā]
That is not true, Australia has been using pumped Hydro for many decades. You pump water from the bottom of a hill to the top of a hill (used to be at night) and store it in a specially built dam, then you release that water during the day to generate electricity. You recover about 80% of the energy used to pump the water up hill.
[/quote]
Sucking eggs springs to mindā¦
You donāt generate much electricity sucking eggs.
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Isnāt that the opposite of āeconomies of scaleā?
As in Australia being part of the British Empireās diseconomies of scale?
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Water storage for the purposes of generating electricity makes it somewhat synonymous.
There are, of course, other uses for surplus electricity in terms of storage. Apart from land āreservoirsā, iirc development in building water towers for largely the same purpose has been developed.
Using excess energy to create hydrogen for hydrogen fuelled electric engines would also be useful.
It does seem somewhat silly that wind farms are turned off so they donāt produce electricity which isnāt āneededā at that precise moment, but that the companies are still largely paid for it, when that could and should be used for potential storage and their equivalents.
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I think we are proverbial āknee highsā when it comes to storing electricity Dex.
There are some ingenious ways to produce electricity at the drop of a hat, but none so efficient as a power station, whatever you decide to fuel it with.
However, I think we will keep trying, and Iām sure that one day a solution will be found.
Meanwhile, we all pay for the projects on our bills, whether they are cost efficient or notā¦
I do believe that wind turbines have to keep rotating whether they are generating or not. Most use diesel engines or steal electricity from the grid.
They wonāt tell you that on the BBCā¦
No, they donāt, they just turn the blades to face the wind - watch the video in the OP.
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