Hi Roddy: Seems like you are arguing with me.
Yeah, thanks for making my original point: both charging and discharging are important functions, and they don’t both take place at the same time, and the discharging function is the only one that produces electricity, and since that only last for a couple of hours per day, the storage facility is an expensive power plant that is only used less than 10% of the time. .
Which numbers are “waaay out”?
My “pop fact” on German energy markets is just what I hear on the financial and news channels. They keep telling us that Germany shut down too many coal and gas power plants in favor of wind and solar, electricity prices soared in response, and that now that they allowed themselves to become dependent on Russia for natural gas supplies, with the Ukraine conflict, Russia is not shipping enough natural gas to Germany, and now Germany is worried about people freezing to death next winter. Supposedly, Germany is planning to convert stadiums into emergency warming shelters for all the freezing people. That’s just what we hear on the news - so what are the real facts, if you know?
One thing I’ve considered lately is all the time wasted discussing AWE online for the last 14 years. Seems like there is nothing left to say, so we’re applying our armchair-genius-level-thinking to all sorts of other (related) topics, like energy storage. I noticed interesting similarities between probably-unworkable energy storage ideas, like concrete-block-reeling, to kite-reeling.
Seems like there really is little to no real “news” in AWE anymore (if there ever was).
I mean, a couple of years ago the “big news” was working factories were producing AWE systems and had just begin shipping them around the world. What ever happened to that?
I know, I know, we’re not supposed to ask any questions, just go along to get along. Sure, we must now have a burgeoning “industry” with an ever-increasing adoption of AWE systems, right? Powering hundreds of homes? Or was that all more wishful-thinking news-of-the-future, getting just a bit ahead of reality? What about all the “disaster relief” systems? Where are they today? Relieving disasters? Oh, wait - newsflash - we’re having the 13th annual “conference” - where the true-believers preach to the choir? So what happens next? Any AWE systems in regular operation yet? I know I’ve been asking this for at least a decade. Yeah I know, everyting I say must be wrong. It’s OK, I can take it. 
Yep,
Thanks for highlighting
There’s something I can do (and not do) to save my energy and enjoy a more productive life
Thanks Doug
WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH GERMANY’S NUCLEAR PLANTS?
Nuclear-fired power plants, which still supplied 12% of Germany’s gross electricity generation in 2021, remain controversial in Germany, which decided to shut them down after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011.
As a result wind was favored, but as it is intermittent, a backup with gas and coal was required, leading to an increase of dependence on supplies from Russia, and an increase in CO2 emissions.
Now Germany: 280 g; France: 94 g.
Apart from that, batteries are possible for individual use or temporary storage, not for massive storage (see the very low or zero battery storage values on the link above) which is supplied by clean pumped-storage hydroelectricity, or fossil backup as for Germany.
Hi Pierre: Yes how could I have left out the nuke plant shutdown? Also a big factor. In response to Fukushima. Unbelievable that Japan made such a mistake, given their location in a strong Earthquake zone and Tsunami zone. Just goes to show you, nukes are completely safe - unless something goes wrong! A lot of these problems seem so artificially-created, with so many “convenient” coincidences, it makes one wonder if there is a hidden agenda. (???)
The good professor (Crackpot) is at it again:
He’s just solved all the problems of wind energy!
The good professor also spent some time at GE:
Molten Salt Battery - transportation revolution:
Today GE has not been doing so well, despite being a major wind turbine manufacturer. They recently decided to split into 3 separate companies. Give it a few more years, and the next genius will probably decide to re-combine the 3 separate companies again.
Shouldnt such a breakthrough get it’s own thread?
Still; going after clueless people is easy. Pointing a path into the future is the hard part. Im not sure if you just concluded HAWT is the pinnacle of wind power, or there may be something better [at least for some uses] out there. That is what would interest me more.
You know Doug’s answer well.
All roads lead to SuperTurbine ™.
Hi Tallak:
The reason I posted these items I had just, by luck, come across within an hour or so, is to illustrate how easy it is for teams we would assume knew better, to chase whacky ideas and talk about them in all seriousness, while those of us with just a little more knowledge or common sense can immediately see how silly they are. I mean, Jeff Immelt, head of GE, promoting a molten salt battery for cars? Really, you are going to sit there while a 1500 lb. battery pack is heated up to the temperature of a pizza oven. THEN you are free to drive? Sure, real sensible, let’s spend a quarter billion dollars on it!
Or these guys with another vertical-axis turbine. But not a good one. A really goofy-looking one, with way too much rotor solidity. Part Savonius with cloth sails? And you notice their renderings show a thin floating foundation, hoisting a heavy concrete(?) weight. But there was no float big enough to float such a weight shown. Maybe they hadn’t thought it through that far yet. But at least they were “educated” to the point that they “knew” the vertical-axis turbine was a better choice. And they “knew” it would be cheaper, AND a better return on capital because it could keep working in ridiculously strong storms! Because big storms are the best time to make a lot of wind energy, especially at sea! And it’s also a good idea to provide a huge generator to take advantage of those storms, even though your turbine would be dragged down by a way-too-big generator 99.8% of the time. These guys are geniuses. Reminds me of how AWE people all assumed we’d be harnessing the Jet Stream but only years later started calculating how much the tether would weigh… How did these Professor Crackpots “know” their turbines would keep working at 40 m/s winds? Because they had never built or run a wind turbine in their entire lives, so they just thought it “looked” like it “should” - I guess…
I wonder if they had done any back-of-the-envelope calculations on how much energy their weight could store? Let’s see, energy = weight x height, OK here’s an easy calculator:
Allright, 1000 kg x 300 m = 0.82 kWh, (but then you’d have to subtract the volume of water the weight displaces, some water friction, cable friction, motor/generator/gearbox efficiency. Maybe you could get a half a kWh. But offshore turbines are into the MegaWatts, and you’d need enough flotation to buoy that correspondingly huge amount of mass. And then here is another thing about the Professor Crackpot Syndrome: always ruining a god invention by adding a bad invention. If a floating island with reeling weights for energy storage is a good idea, why “ruin” it with a vertical-axis turbine? If it is a valid component, it should stand on its own as an energy storage idea. This is where investors should be smarter. They tend to swallow a story that a known bad idea should be a great idea if it is combined with an unknown idea. “All-ya-gotta-do-is” reasoning. Astute investors would start with examining the two parts of the idea separately - is either one valid?
Anyway, we should all get good at debunking goofy energy ideas, starting with our own. We all need to spend time debunking our own ideas more than others, but debunking others gives us good practice.