Rod Speed wrote:
dpb wrote
....
There are a number of those using hydro systems that get the storage
by pumping water up at time of excess supply from the baseload coal
generators and return that power to the system at times of excess
....
I am fully aware of pumped hydro storage.

If you were, you wouldnt have made that stupid claim you clearly did make.

No, I simply don't equate pumped storage w/ electricity storage --
they're separate forms...one _uses_ the (temporarily) excess power to
refill the power supply, the other would be a storage of the electric
power itself to be used later.

They're of da'ed little value for the locations of most wind farms on the High Plains where there are (a) no hills,
(b) no surface water.

Pity about the SE Australian grid where the wind farms
are part of the SAME grid as the pumped hydro storage.

Well, SE Australia isn't the US High Plains. There would have to be
even more currently nonexistent transmission lines built to supply the
power to somewhere there is sufficient elevation difference and water to
complete the system and that ain't within anywhere close. CO has
elevation but very little excess water. KS, OK, TX, NE, etc. have
minimal elevations. Catch-22.

Again, I repeat--even if pumped storage were the pancea, that _STILL_ is
an alternative system that would have to be built as a complement to the
wind farm system which _STILL_ is an added cost burden.

Your 'as yet don't have a single large-scale energy storage
system that I'm aware of' is clearly just plain wrong.

AND it aint the only one either.

Agreed, used to live just down the road from Smith Mtn. But, it still
ain't the same thing...

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