In my neighborhood, we lose power every time there is a windstorm. Using the house as an effective Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) would make my life and the lives of nearly everyone in my township and the adjoining township (20,000 people scattered across 50 square miles) much more pleasant. It might be less relevant in places where the grid comes in through buried lines or where one’s roof is blocked from sunlight by towering nearby buildings or trees, of course.
Hydro can actually respond fairly quickly, by opening and closing valves you put more or less pressure on the turbine. However, that relies on there being enough water behind your dam to safely increase power (pumped storage can help with this - basically turning your reservoir into a big battery.)
Of course, hydro is severely limited by geography and the fact that people don’t like to build gigantic dams anymore (for pretty good reasons.)
Places that have lots of hydro power would seem well suited to take advantage of renewables; build solar and wind generators, and use those to take some of the load off the dams. The dams open more valves when needed.
Salmon cannon to the rescue!
Yes, but hydro is renewable and fairly environmentally friendly to begin with, so the incentive for building solar and wind is no longer “replace fossil energy”, it’s “meet increased demand” or “export”. And hydro power comes with its own variability challenges. Rainfall probably varies through the year, but you can’t just save it all up, unless you’re willing to kill whole rivers.
Norway for instance import a lot of energy from neighbouring countries towards the end of winter.
Exactly. The only problem with wind turbines is if they are too close to habitation - the problem is light flicker from the sunlight through the rotating blades, as well as the noise, but a few hundred yards away and neither issue applies any longer. The visual aspect? I don’t much care for wind turbines in an attractive area, but they can plaster the prairies with the things for all I care.
The economics? Wind turbines last a long time, but require maintenance and are expensive to build. Nonetheless, they produce more energy than they consume. I believe that modern solar panels can also do that; the earlier ones did not.
The real answer? As stated already, small wind turbines of various designs to generate power where it is needed instead of using big machines to generate a lot of it and then transporting it long distances. The current craze for offshore wind, with the towers in the sea, may turn out to be an expensive mistake in the long run, due to the high maintenance and repair costs.
Next off: water power. If we can use tidal and wave power on a bigger scale, the potential is far greater than for wind. Anyway, it’s all a good thing if we can do without fossil fuel and nuclear power stations.