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A comment on Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal "in a few years". Parent comment

Re:Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal... by xal on Tuesday June 07, 2011 @08:18PM (#2631513)
all the batteries that we have ever build combined cannot store 10 minutes of the electricity that we currently use. We need order of magnitude breakthrough with batteries first.
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Re:Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal... by bobo888 on Wednesday June 08, 2011 @12:57AM (#2632077)
Usually a hydro power plant is used as a "battery". When the demand is low, the electricity produced by wind/solar power plants is used to pump the water uphill. When the demand is high, the hydro power plant releases that water to produce energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_hydro

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Re:Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal... by Luyt on Wednesday June 08, 2011 @03:45PM (#2634702)
That works in Norway, but would it work all over the globe?
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Re:Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal... by jbm on Thursday June 09, 2011 @02:07AM (#2636205)
They do it in Japan, and I think they do it in Quebec. Don't quote me on the second one.

They had to have rotating power outages for a week or two in Japan after the earthquake because of the need to replenish those reserves.

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Re:Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal... by rosser on Tuesday June 07, 2011 @08:36PM (#2631564)
An article posted to HN some time back:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1708167/how-to-make-lithium-batte...

Discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1986640

Summary: Infusing Li-based batteries with the Tobacco Mosaic virus could boost their storage capacity up to 10x. There's one order of magnitude...

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