Mike Tomlinson wrote:
One of the smaller Canary islands, el Hierro, has built a combined
hydro/wind power station. Hydro is used by allowing water to flow from
an upper reservoir to a lower reservoir, driving turbines, and wind
power is used to pump the water back up to the upper reservoir.

"At the end of June its new hydro-wind facility, Gorona del Viento, came
fully on stream and in July and August it provided roughly half of the
island's energy needs. That means the island's 10,000 inhabitants are
suddenly less reliant on supplies of diesel arriving over unpredictable
seas from Tenerife, 200km away"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34424606

It's not the sort of solution that could be applied everywhere, of
course, but I found this particular application interesting. I worked
on the neighbouring island, La Palma, for many years.


More like 20km, not 200.

I don't think that there is any argument that renewables can work well in
some places. The Canaries are blessed with lots of wind and El Hiero
clearly has the important storage capacity.

Currently we lack storage (and wind a lot of the time).

Tim