As I've said before, the key to making wind energy truly useful will be finding a way to store the energy locally and dispense as a more consistent power source. The link below talks about Texas' increasing use of wind energy and work being done to store it.
http://www.isa.org/Content/ContentGroups/News/20071/October30/Understanding_wind_powers_variability.htm
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think wind energy has good potential, but there really is no good storage method. However, one interesting method that is used in a power plants in Alabama and one in Germany, is air is compressed underground when there's excess power. This saves natural gas, although it still uses some to heat the air. Check out this article it's interesting. I went to a presentation about this a year or two ago, and found it pretty interesting. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10695864/
That was a good article that you posted. I hadn't heard of that method of storing energy before. The only thing I could think of to store energy was a giant (giant) flywheel or something. I suppose that wouldn't be very practical. What amazes me the most is that something of this nature has been in use for nearly 25 years and nobody else has tried it. It's surprising how long it takes some engineered solutions to gain traction.
Post a Comment