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Re:Oil Crash is Kicking Off One of the Largest Wealth Transf... by clock_tower on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:04PM (#11021615)
After living with nuclear naysayers for decades (and rolling my eyes at them), I hate to be a nuclear naysayer myself; but there's been some use of "pumped hydro" for storing electricity generated by solar power.

The principle is simple: build a hydroelectric dam and run it in reverse. Of course, this can't be done everywhere; you need a lot of peak solar production, a lot of water, and an easily-dammed valley, and you don't often see all three together... But it does get used to store power, and solar plus pumped hydro represent a kinda-sorta alternative to nuclear.

Re:Oil Crash is Kicking Off One of the Largest Wealth Transf... by _nedR on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:52PM (#11021991)
How efficient would that be though?
Re:Oil Crash is Kicking Off One of the Largest Wealth Transf... by binarypaean on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @03:38PM (#11022324)
Round-trip energy efficiency is reported to be > 80% for pumped-hydro energy storage.

Ecological, space, and financial efficiency are more variable.

http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technologies/pumped-...

Re:Oil Crash is Kicking Off One of the Largest Wealth Transf... by rndmind on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:39PM (#11021873)
The concept of a storing energy this way is fascinating.
Re:Oil Crash is Kicking Off One of the Largest Wealth Transf... by danjayh on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @10:57PM (#11024649)
Problem is, many of the anti-combustion folks are also anti-dam, because of the habitat the reservoir destroys.
Re:Oil Crash is Kicking Off One of the Largest Wealth Transf... by clock_tower on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @12:30PM (#11027864)
They're also anti-nuke. I've even heard people who are anti-wind (the watchword is "birdchoppers") and anti-solar (since solar panels wreck desert ecologies)... Let's just say it's a good thing they aren't responsible for development.