Atlanta Housing Source

When I worked in Tulsa Ok in the early 1980s they had a way to store electricity in what amounted to a big ‘battery’. You see the electrical generating plants come on line and they run continuously because they take to long to bring on line. They can’t just turn them on and off at the drop of a hat as demand goes up and down.

The problem has been the high demand during daylight hours and the low demand during nighttime. How do you save the excess energy generated?

At night they generate just as much energy as they do in the daytime. The big issue is that the usage is down during the night so power is plentiful, actually wasted. The challenge is how to store that excess energy generated at night for use the next day, hence the ‘battery’.

Outside of Tulsa they built a thing they call ‘pumped-storage’. (To find out more about pumped storage, click here.) They built a lake at the top of a hill and at night they pump water from a lower level lake to the lake at the top.

They fill the upper lake with 4 giant turbines pumping water through 14’ pipes called, penstocks, up the hill with the excess night electricity. Then the next day, during peak power needs, the water flows back downhill through the turbines and generates electricity. Read more details about the Salina OK Pumped-Storage facility.

Now another alternative ‘battery’, the use of ice to store energy has been developed and written up in the NY Times article.

Alternative green energy sources need to be further explored, but I think some of these ideas are proving to be viable and I wanted to share them with you.