[Discuss] Eclipses Re: Great talks last night, however...

[Richard Pieri]

On 7/20/2017 7:36 PM, A. Richard Miller wrote:
> environmental pollution issues, 90% thermal loss, on that scale, and 
> except for where it can provide NEEDED heating, becomes DIRECT Climate 
> Warming all on its own. IS it that extreme with electrical storage 

No. You can't get more waste heat from charging batteries with solar
power than what you get from solar energy warming the planet directly.
You can't get more energy out of a system than you put into it.

> How else might we store solar energy? As an environmentalist, I rather 
> like the Northfield Mountain pumped-storage project 
> <http://www.h2opower.ca/firstlight-power>. It's been rather benign 
> environmentally for 45 years now. The mountain habitat is well-managed 

Except for the initial habitat destruction incurred by the creation of
the reservoir in the first place.

Mechanical storage isn't any better than chemical storage. It's
different with different problems like friction and mechanical wear.

The problem isn't how we store electricity. It's that we store
electricity. Regardless of how we end up generating electricity,
converting it for storage and then converting it back for use will
always be less efficient than using electricity directly.

-- 
Rich P.