On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 11:31:49 +0100
The Natural Philosopher  wrote:

> On 30/07/18 09:15, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> > On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 07:36:33 +0100
> > The Natural Philosopher  wrote:
> >
> >> That mecahnism's functionality needs replicating with a DC grid. Maybe
> >> big capacitors on the lines would provide some inherent storage.
> >
> >  Batteries seem effective in California,
>
> ROFLMAO!

 OK perhaps I should have mentioned Australia - the point is
batteries not California.

> > although I'm not so sure
> > that huge batteries maintaining the grid is a better solution than
> > putting them in houses and factories and sticking PV panels on roofs
> > thus making the integrity of the grid far less important.
> >
> I am not talking about maintaining the grid. I am talking about adding
> some few seconds of 'inertia ' to it.

 Batteries can do both at utility scale or at domestic scale make
the reliability of the grid far less important.

> The cost of a domestic solar panel and enough battery storage for winter
> well exceeds the cost of a nuclear power station and a national grid.

 Why on earth would you want enough power storage for winter ? That
would take four or five megawatt hours of storage.

 A few hours storage (say ten to twenty kilowatt hours) and a few
kilowatts peak of panel (just enough that the total collected annually is
close to the total used annually) is enough to make a huge difference,
especially if excess power can be sold (or even given free) to the grid when
the batteries are full.

 Even without solar panels a few hours of on-site power storage is
more than enough to cope with brownouts and the vast majority of outages.
It's just that once you have the storage feeding it with locally generated
solar or wind power makes obvious sense.

 Had such a setup been feasible in 1973 it would have made the
regular three hour power cuts completely unnoticeable and reduced the
impact of the oil crisis to being a minor nuisance.

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