Writing at Power Line, senior blogger John Hinderaker waxes poetic about the shortcomings of wind and solar power. Most particularly, he shows why batteries cannot store significant amounts of power for those times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.
There is another approach which has as its main obstacle the Sierra Club, which opposes hydro power. If you create a reservoir in a mountain valley and use falling water from that lake to spin hydroelectric generators you can generate power. This everyone knows.
However, you can also pump water back uphill into the reservoir using surplus clean energy during sunny and windy periods and then let it flow back down through the turbines to generate power in the dark hours, or when it's calm. Thus, a way to store power is to pump water up and then generate hydro power when the clean sources stop generating.
It is my understanding there are already examples of this recycled-water technology in use in this country. Anywhere there are mountains and rain or snowfall there are places where reservoirs can be created. Created, that is, if we can fend off crazed environmentalists who view every 'drowned' valley as a tragedy instead of as a beautiful mountain lake.
