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Use pumped storage systems to store solar genetarted electricity.
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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by Leon Silverman</i> <br /><br />The purpose of pumped storage facilities is to maintain loading on other power plants. Unlike the relativel small prime movers used in surface transportation (cars, trains and ships), multimegawatt power plants cannot "follow the load". They can increase or decrease their output by only a couple megawatts and hour. Consequently, they have to run at essentially the same full power output all the time. The excess generating capacity is used to fill up the pumped storage reservoir at night. During the day, when these multimegawatt plants' output is insuffficient to provide all the power needs of the grid, the pumped storage water is allowed to flow back through the pumping turbines to provide the extra peaking power needed to meet the requirements of grid system. <br /> To put it in railroad terms, suppose the diesels' dynamic brakes charged up a large bank of batteries housed in a trailing slug instead of disapating the power as heat . That slug could then be used as an additional booster to maintain the train's speed up the next grade without the expenditure of additional fuel. This is the principal of the hybrid drive that is increasingly being used in automobiles. <br /> Solar cells shut down at night. Their power has to used immediately in order to make them economical. It does not pay to store their power, particularly since no conversion process (light to electricity, storage or electricity, regeneration of electricity, transmission of that power, is 100% efficient. <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />But that would mean that we would have clean power 24 hours a day. If we had signed the Kyoto Agreement we would be working on this right now.
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