Pat Farrell wrote:
Chris Baron wrote:Regarding the storage of energy: what's wrong with batteries?
Just about everything. For starters, they are all made with toxic and often lethal materials. Then there is the minor engineering fact that they provide a small amount of power over time, whereas peak load needs are lots of power right now. No battery can deliver that. Then you have to look at their low power density per cubic foot/meter. The list goes on and on.
Batteries are great for small amounts of power where portability is king. If you want even a modest amount of power, you need huge and heavy batteries (look at any car battery). There is no portability in solar, wind or hydro power, they are fixed, batteries are a poor fit from a simple engineering view, let alone economics.