Science Cryogenic storage offers hope for renewable energy.

[PhantomCruiser]

They have a lot of water (800 miles of it). It's just got too high sodium content.

 

[APDAF]

But will renewables ever be powerful enough to power the entire world without covering everwhere windy with wind farm, everwhere sunny with solar panels or damming every large river all of which are weather dependant...

Nuclear has no weather dependancy...

 

[Enjo]

But will renewables ever be powerful enough to power the entire world without covering everwhere windy with wind farm, everwhere sunny with solar panels or damming every large river all of which are weather dependant..

Check these Wiki articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_Kingdom

In Germany over 12% of consumed energy* consists of renewables and in UK over 20% of produced electricity* consists of renwables. I can't say that even 12% of land here is taken by wind generators, and solar panels can be placed on area wasted anyway - rooftops. I don't see a problem here.

* consumed energy and produced electricity are two different terms. Consumed energy encompasses electricity and doesn't take into account the renewable energy wasted on peak (and that's what this thread is about - more such already produced energy will be consumed). Produced electricity on the other hand doesn't take oil into account and probably doesn't take takes the amount of energy wasted into account. So with such buffers the german plot will rise and UK's will stay the same. But as I said, now it will actually pay off to build more sources, so in the end both will rise.



---------- Post added at 06:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:51 PM ----------

Also look at this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...opening-of-worlds-largest-solar-power-project

The plant is part of a vision to move beyond this heavy dependency and raise renewable energy production to 42% of its total power needs by 2020.

And it's on a freakin' dessert.

 

[Urwumpe]

In Germany over 12% of consumed energy* consists of renewables and in UK over 20% of produced electricity* consists of renwables. I can't say that even 12% of land here is taken by wind generators, and solar panels can be placed on area wasted anyway - rooftops. I don't see a problem here.

There are some realism effects also now, like the realization that not every place of Germany is suitable for a 9 MW wind turbine.

But yes. In my hometown, they want to build the first wind turbine of over 200 meters height (type E-115, 3.2 MW) at one of the best locations for wind power, should the local politicians agree to permit it instead of the three smaller wind turbines (Type E-40, 600 kW) in that place (which are only 15 years old, but already considered ineffective and obsolete - technology progressed quickly in the past years). While a lot of the less good places are not growing and are likely kept alive by subsidies, the good locations attract investments. Here, three farmers got pretty wealthy by building the wind turbines where their fields met. Fun fact: The currently richest person in the state of Lower Saxony is the founder of Enercon, Aloys Wobben. He made 7.5 billion Euro with his wind turbine company and is also the 14th richest German...

Even if you assume that you can't ever reach 100% renewable - every percent renewable you have saves you a lot of money. Wind turbines are already much cheaper than even coal power on good locations, despite their also growing initial costs. And solar power competes favorable against gas power and nuclear power per kWh. With effective means to store the energy (like by producing hydrogen for fuel cells as well), this only gets more favorable towards the renewables.

Its the joke of the century that the planned nuclear powerplant Hickley Point C requires a subsidied price of electricity for 30 years, that is over twice as high as the subsidied price that renewables get only for the next 10 years.