Ping.
That’s all well and good but how much damage will be done to them by cleats; and are they as easy to repair/replace as sod?
This has the sound of a business plan that only makes sense from the standpoint of a state-run neo-fascist economy fed by endless amounts of cheap labor. Like China. Otherwise, giant batteries make no more sense than giant capacitors or giant windmills.
This is interesting. It would be fun to amortize to 20 year total cost of ownership of a coal burning plant, a nuclear plant and a wind farm with these batteries. Let’s also factor in reliability and cost of power produced.
I suspect the wind farm (or solar farm) will still lose.
There is a large wind farm on I-65 north of Indianapolis. Usually when we drive through virtually all the blades are turning. We were driving down from Chicago on the 1st of January on a particularly windy day and maybe one in ten was operating. I assumed they had batteries to store the excess power until I saw that.
It never dawned on me that batteries may be prohibitively expensive. Too bad they can’t sell excess power like Washington state does to California.
I knew a storage facility in the 1970 call Crater Lake. Excess power was used to put water up to a mountain lake, then when needed though Hyrdo generators. Don't know how efficient that was. But how efficient would lake storage be in comparison to batteries? And how long would the storage last in comparison?
These are the engineering questions needed lest we have another Solyndra.
Let see pro football stadiums are used 16 weekends (plus a few playoff cames). For the other 330 days a year should we flood them and turn them into giant batteries. Great idea....
Is the author taking about a kick-ball field size battery?
Liquid Thorium reactors..... We need them.
“Trust Me” — green energy industry
So wind power is even more expensive?
The whole idea is DOA. Battery economics will never be able to overcome the drawbacks of battery physics. That is to say, the energy produced by ‘renewable’ resources will NEVER be able to overcome the cost of building, maintaining, and eventually disposing of and replacing the battery. ALL batteries are consumable, and you have to factor that cost into the entire picture.
Great!
A giant football pitch sized battery that can go into a violent discharge state.
Wonder what that looks like?
BS
Show me a windfarm that runs at a 40% capacity factor.
More likely 25%.
Just another green company to short.
Batteries would just make it more expensive.
Futball (soccer) is played on a “pitch”. Football (American) is played on a field.
The pitch is somewhat larger than the field.
“2011 saw huge advances in solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, “
What?!
Can anyone point me to a “huge advance” story that does NOT contain the words “could” or “might” or some similar qualifier? I don’t think so.
I follow this site on a regular basis and have noted they are very pro wind and solar energy. Go into their comments section and and it won’t take long to see who their audience is.
I find Fuel Fix, Institute for Energy Research and Rig Zone are better informed.