Neon John wrote:
On Sun, 7 Dec 2008 07:31:41 -0800 (PST), John Nagelson
wrote:

Not so great with wind-generated energy is the fact that you need a
battery bank, and batteries are expensive.

So why not store the energy as gravitational potential energ

Ahhhh, another liberal arts major :-) OK, smart-assed mode off.

E.g. make the generated energy lift a large weight, controlled in such
a way that it falls when you need it to, yielding just the amount of
electrical power you need?

there are two answers to this question:

A) we already are. It's called hydroelectric power. More specifically pumped
storage power. Unfortunately it takes a whole lot of water to make a little
bit of electricity. Research TVA's Raccoon Mountain pumped storage facility
to see just how much water has to be pumped how high to store just a partial
day's worth of output of the nearby Sequoyah nuclear plant.


I calculated it would take something the size of lake windermere, raised
1000ft, to backup just ten percent of the countries total energy needs
for one day.

Multiply that by 20 to fully back up an entire countryside filled with
windmills every kilometer, to supply that countries total energy needs
RELIABLY.


Basically build a 1000ft wall round london, and fill it up.

Not a bad idea, but expensive.