Two new stories here that will change our future, I think it's the beginning of the end for Coal, Gas and hopefully Oil too, if we can wean people away from "dirty diesel" and "polluting petrol", but maybe that's for another thread.

New laws and subsidies in battery technology/development here in the UK are going to change the way we generate and store electricity.

It's early days but it will happen, I believe 

Electricity shake-up could save consumers 'up to £40bn'

World's first floating wind farm emerges off coast of Scotland

  It has been advertised for some time that the state will pay for the cost of solar panels installed on homes.  I also read an article about the effect of led lighting has led to the a reduction of electric used by quite a bit. 
  I think it is going to be quite a while for the diesel engines to die out, over here they are used in busses and school busses as well as moving things from one part of the US to another. Since I've always wondered how it was affordable to import things from other parts of the world which is commonly done I now find myself shopping online and buying things from China for the e cig thing.
Carl2

Quote from: Carl2 on July 25, 2017, 12:51:42 PM
  It has been advertised for some time that the state will pay for the cost of solar panels installed on homes.

That sounds great Carl

We have done the same kind of thing over here in the UK for a number of years now, unfortunately it is stopping soon as we try to move to the next faze, or the money has run out. 

The latest big thing here is to have solar panels on our homes connected to a "battery wall" in the home, the panels will charge the battery so the owner can use the power at night. The battery wall will also be connected to the grid so power can go back to the grid if needed.

What we can't generate from the home solar panels we can get from the wind farms which will also charge large battery farms that the government is planning to build. The battery farms can be used when the wind isn't blowing. 

I may have oversimplified it but that's the basic idea.
Quite simple, cheap and environmentally friendly electricity for our homes and cars

That is the Rethinking of Electricity and the future, if we choose to have the belief.

I have seen some nice district storage ideas. They work on the small village size and up and use chemical tanks to store energy that can be converted to electrical power when required.
And thermal storage so you need less electrical power.

Yeah that's the kind of idea Snowy, I think they are looking at building very large lithium ion battery farms (for want of a better word) like this one in Australia

If we have a few of them around the country and can generate enough power to charge them it could well be part of the equation.   

Interesting vid on energy density of batteries. Current to theoretical limits.



And can we manufacture enough? The numbers.



It's doable.

Had to add this little bit of wind farm info to the thread.

Tesla Powerwall, I need to move house so I can get some serious solar panels up, one day.

Note to Snowy:
I moved your previous post in the EV thread to this thread, it seems to fit better here.

Renewable energy and storage, gets my vote 

I know I go on about it but this is the future, battery walls in homes, car to grid technology in EV's and battery farms to fill in the gaps.

The Orkney experiment will work, I believe   

Found some figures on our wind farm.

Quote
Final plans use 116 turbines of approximately 3.45 MW capacity, each 140 metres (459.3 ft) high to the tip of the blade, which represents a 43% reduction in the size of the development after planning consent was granted.

Originally proposed using either 175 smaller turbines of 3–3.6 MW capacity, each 180 metres (590.6 ft) above low tide sea level, or 100 larger turbines of 7 MW capacity, each 210 metres (689.0 ft) above sea level.

Looks like the NIMBYs got in there then. Total of about 400MW rather than approx. 1GW. I counted 101 yesterday from the hill above you (Data), so it's near completion.

Really looking forward to our wind farm being completed and seeing them turbines spinning, shouldn't be too long now then 

Yeah it looks like the NIMBYs did get a little victory there  we need to make it our job to fight these small minded excuses for humans and remind them that their little lives are insignificant compared to the bigger picture.

Sorry but they make me

Anyway, good post Snowy, keep up the good fight soldier, confront these NIMBYs wherever you find them and blind them with facts.

  Sorry but I'm old, I let the children worry and try to fix these things, I refer to them as children but am talking young adults, I had a fairy young policeman stop me for speeding in a new car I bought and was trying out, pulled a gun on me, first time I had a gun pointed at me so I guess he was scared.  I try to avoid stress.
Carl2

Quote from: Carl2 on September 15, 2017, 22:07:08 PM
  Sorry but I'm old, I let the children worry and try to fix these things, I refer to them as children but am talking young adults.

I'm not sure the children or young adults have the life experience to deal with these things, they may think they do but they need guidance and wisdom from their elders.

Together we can achieve great things.

Found this and thought I'd share...

Though it may be BS