Tesla Energy is Getting Serious – A Battery Powered World?

originally posted by: SolAquarius
a reply to: Box of Rain

Yes your right the battery does not produce energy but merely stores energy.

It doesn't make a difference for electricity produced from burning fossil fuels, generating hydropower, or nuclear.
All the above can produce energy on demand for peak needs. The coal plant simply burns more coal as needed. The hydroelectric dam simply lets more water through to generate electricity. The nuclear plant just increases the reaction in the reactor and they all put it out on the grid as needed

For solar and wind it is not the same. The wind is not always blowing. The sun gets blocked by clouds and isn't around during the night. Sometimes a lot of energy is being produced but there is no demand at the time so it is lost energy.

Couldn't solar farms just "lend" their daytime excess power to the grid and take back an equal amount of power from the grid at night? That would be similar to a battery, but the excess power is "stored" (in a manner of speaking) on the grid rather than in a battery.

The same thing could be true for wind farms: excess power produced when it's windy lent to the grid, with an equal amount take back when the winds are calm.

I realize that the power produced by solar and wind would not actually be stored on the grid as if the grid were a battery, but the overall net amount of power produced by solar and wind would be the same, but just spread around, lessening the overall need for electricity from fossil fuels. Granted, the power the solar producer "takes back" from the grid at night could likely come from a fossil fuel source, but the overall fossil fuel demand would still be reduced by an amount equal to that produced by solar or wind.

I suppose there are inefficiencies caused by distributing that power over power lines to and from the grid, but are those inefficiencies greater than that of batteries?

a reply to: Box of Rain

Something like this is probably being currently done to certain degree since solar and wind plants are already active. I think the point of having power storage is so that wind and solar can replace or be on an even level with fossil fuel generated power.

Flow batteries have Tesla batteries beat.
And they are just getting better.
cleantechnica.com...

a reply to: ANNED

Yeah Flow batteries are pretty cool.
I don't care what the means of storage is as long a someone gets the ball rolling on energy storage and takes it from concept to actual implementation.