So wind turbines, often to be found at sea, farm the natural energy of the wind and convert it into electricity to be used on the land via a dynamo. But it is well known that energy requirements fluctuate according to time of day and other variables which the wind is largely oblivious to, meaning power has to be stored or wasted when demand is low. Some hyrdopower systems even pump water up a mountain during off-peak times, storing it as potential energy to unleash at peak times, though this clearly doesn't represent a green solution.

Perhaps the answer could involve storing the energy inside the turbines themselves? If you look at them, the are like giant straws, while the windmill at the top likely has the power to suck water up through that straw to the top.

While demand is low, the turbines can switch modes and become a pump, sucking sea water up inside its shaft to be stored there. Later, when electricity is required and the wind is dormant, the water can simply be flushed down, turning another dynamo inside, with the flow set according to how much energy we need. Additional tanks or height could be added to the top to accommodate extra water. The turbines now essentially have their own 'batteries' storing potential energy at its source for use at our convenience.
-- TheBamforth, Jun 08 2020

Sets that contain themselves, AFA https://plato.stanf...founded-set-theory/
[beanangel, Dec 21 2020]

A useful weight of water at a useful height will put enormous additional strain on the supporting structure of the wind turbine.

A pump and a hydro-turbine built into each wind turbine will involve much duplication of moving parts, many of those moving parts being in constant contact with corrosive salt water, even when not in use.

The bulk of the structure which holds the head of water may be so great as to impair the airflow on which the wind turbines depend.

Is it possible that all the turbines of a given wind farm might share a single "water tower" with a single pump and a single hydroelectric generator? Is it possible that they could all be mechanically connected to this single structure without extravagant wastage of energy in mechanical transmission, using yet more high-precision components which, again, must be protected against the salt water?

If not, then you might be better off just drawing electrical current from the wind turbines, which would then drive a pump at some quite separate hydroelectric site.
-- pertinax, Jun 09 2020


[pertinax]; on the one hand, a pump is a turbine, so you could just have the one & run it in the required direction.
On the other; yes, it would probably be more efficient to have a "separate" hydro-battery system, driven electrically by the wind-turbines.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Jun 09 2020


This idea would work better upside-down, pumping air into big underwater diving-bell-like contraptions.
-- pocmloc, Jun 09 2020


I'm listening: how do you then extract the energy from the big bubble?
-- pertinax, Jun 09 2020


This is very clever.

The only criticism is would it be easier to just take that excess energy and pump the water into a lake inland to store the water?

Just saying that the water storage tanks on the windmills would be pricey.

Still, clever idea.
-- doctorremulac3, Jun 09 2020


Or you pump the water out of the diving bell and then its exactly like this idea but the opposite
-- pocmloc, Jun 09 2020


//This idea would work better upside-down, pumping air into big underwater diving-bell-like contraptions.//

That's brilliant! Cheap and workable.

But instead of a diving bell, or external tanks, turn the whole thing into a cylinder under water to utilize that water pressure as a storage device. Taking the base, which is presumably hollow anyway, shaping it into a cylinder open to the ocean at the base. When you need to recover that stored energy, just let the water pressure push that cylinder back up.

Thing is, you could dig a deep well and have that cylinder go down hundreds of feet and have pipes feeding the pressurized water to the base. That pressure would increase the deeper the well.
-- doctorremulac3, Jun 09 2020


I think the 2020 cheapology version is to do what is called pumped storage with a water reservoir that is as cheap to make as possible. It might be that is an excavation. Multistory tall straws under the wind turbines are less cheap, at least for now. I think the future will improve.

Better batteries would be better.
-- beanangel, Dec 20 2020


"Put on this snorkel and mask, we have to take a free dive to check the generator. Don't worry, it's just like escaping a sub."
-- wjt, Dec 20 2020


//Better batteries would be better// I hope we can all agree about that statement.
-- pocmloc, Dec 20 2020


If you mine thermal coal for a living, better batteries are most alarming. Not that you'll get any sympathy from me in that case.
-- pertinax, Dec 21 2020


But even then, if they are better, that are by definition better.
-- pocmloc, Dec 21 2020


You are not yet enlightened in the Way of Hegelian Dialectic, Grasshopper.
-- pertinax, Dec 21 2020


I have never been to Hegelia. But the dialect can't be as difficult to pick up as those of Glasgow or Dundee.
-- pocmloc, Dec 21 2020


"But even then, if they are better, that are by definition better." It was kind of nifty when I reread the phrase "making a set a member of itself is [outside ZFC]" **a very similar thing** I think at some kind of math

[pomloc] might, easily, be better at symbolic logic textbook reading [link], and could tell us the cool part, what happens next.

So, anyway, what does happen next? I looked it up, and as recently as 1983 people had new things to say about "better things are better" (a set being a member of itself), "The term non-wellfounded set refers to sets which contain themselves as members, and more generally which are part of an infinite sequence of sets each term of which is an element of the preceding set. So they exhibit object circularity in a blatant way."

Then, in a move that made me feel comfy, they used a language/meaning statement that turned what seemed to be two (or infinite) things into something conceptually ultra-handy and neat not even remotely an array, but that's how it feels. They made up the english word "comember" and cofunction, called the whole thing AFA, and now instead of watching a tennis game in our heads about a set being a member of itself, there's an (enjoyably micronstrual?) feeling like an arrray. We can just treat it as a thing with different properties called a coalgebra (co-algebra), and it has things like co-induction and co-recursion.

The suspense: If someone who read the textbook, and understood it were writing annotations, what would they say? Would they touch on batteries? They might even be able to explain what different states (or statements) of better are going on. I didn't pay close attention, but if AFA, where "better things are better" is a fine thing to say and not funny at all, there is still the possibility f such things as size.

If anyone here has the urge look at the link to AFA and see if you can write the dialog!

So if we/I knew what those things actually were and used them, then There might be talk of "during" or simultaneous betterness, or batteries that

and there is an entire little branch

Sets that are members of themselves, besides giving people the urge to refer to awesome but cliche things like highway-line cut or uncut mobius strips, might have something that comes next. Implications that could guide communication in English.

Like

is read up on the implications and resultant effects of when they say a set is a member of itself. Learn some cool stuff that way. Another thing too is I could Pay a Mathematician.

(You read that right, I said "pay a mathematician") to tell me if the known world of physics contained sets that were members of themselves, if it was "unphysical", or if it happened constantly.
-- beanangel, Dec 21 2020



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