Re: Wind and solar @AC
Large battery farms are not the ideal answer. Grid-scale battery farms using current battery technologies are large, require a lot of valuable resources to build, and have their own safety problems if they catch fire. You might imagine a large building packed with some form of battery, but in reality, you need to spread them out so that if there is a fire, it does not take all of them at the same time.
I wonder whether you could combine a large distributed battery system with solar panels on the top, using the land currently just used for solar farms twice. Have we missed a trick here?
Pumped storage hydro works, but it requires the right type of geography, involving hills/mountains, and a general supply of water. You're not going to build these things in mainly flat countries.
The Eco-warriors will almost certainly complain about spoiled natural habitat as well.
As has been pointed out, molten salt batteries may provide some answers, but current generations appear to be reliant on solar concentrators to keep them molten. If they solidify, I understand that they're very difficult to get back into operation.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
