"dpb" wrote in message ...
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...


There's pumped storage and there's pumped storage. The kind we usually hear
about involve pumping lots of water to an elevated reservoir, and I can see
how it might not be a great choice in areas with little water. On the other
hand, there is compressed air energy storage, and last I knew, there was air
just about everywhere. Not a real widespread technology at the moment, but
there is a 110-MW system in Alabama that's been commercial since 1991.