To be fair, Southern California has year-round sunshine and a low latitude (small seasonal variations in daylight times) so that they should get very far with solar power alone. They probably dont need as many huge, inter-seasonal power storage systems anyway. And the day-to-night storage is relatively easy to tackle with small, decentralized batteries and storage systems. Thermal heat pumps, smaller battery storage facilities, and just the batteries from electric cars are probably enough for a place like California.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 26 2019 11:55pm

If I was in the EU, I'd want to utilize the ocean somehow. For energy, mining, drilling, etc. YES, all across the board it would require new technologies. But the EU has a LOT of coast line, and an unusually large continental shelf area.

Have a look at this NOAA map and notice the relative shallowness of the waters in the area north of Spain, France, Germany, etc. https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/2minrelief.html

Alternate view: https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/relief_slides2.html

All that light turquoise color is like 0 - 700 meters deep. There are many wonderful things in the ocean... temperature differences, food sources, ocean motion, easy access to mining, etc.
The EU is comprised of old countries which have used quite a bit of their natural resources in the past.
I see two options...

1. Acquire land with plenty of natural resources.
2. Start to populate the Sea or Space.

The US and the EU are similar in size, but the EU has almost twice as many people. And the EU has been "using" their land for millennia, rather than a couple centuries.
For the EU, Uranium (other than Greenland), coal, oil, gas, even renewables... is just beating a dead horse. The EU needs NEW methods.

Japan, for example, who is in a similar but far worse situation, already has plans to have 5000 people living under the Sea, by 2030.

Sure, you can keep buying energy, in various forms, from other countries... but that will stall your own economic growth.



I mean if you guys are gonna spend days and weeks, discussing this... might as well start with the "big picture" and work from there. Anything else is just a stop gap measure.




/e Btw we have subs that can stay down for 90 days, and can go 800 ft. (actually deeper, but that's classified). The limit to how long they can stay down is food.

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/facts-about-navy-submarines-4058060




/ee

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130930-can-we-build-underwater-cities

This post was edited by Ghot on Nov 27 2019 01:27am

That wasnt your best post.

Craines are eaasy, it's more about the price of the medium for large scale energy storage. Better have fancy expensive hydroplants to use cheap water

This post was edited by Knoppie on Dec 7 2019 06:22pm

Cranes arent easy when youre making an automated system to stack bricks in a stable manner. Youre going to have to make some autocorrecting program to maintain stability as the bricks are damaged and as the parameters change on weather exposure.

I say its useless now. First line "America is no longer defending its NATO allies". Why is the USA the only one responsible for defending or even spending really. Why is the EU and other NATO members not helping Ukraine with Russia ? Its obsolete and benefits no one on the Western Hemisphere imo. EU can deal with its own problems and needs to instead of relying so much on America's interventions. TBH I see the EU not lasting in the long run. Seems like they don't actually help each other.

Sorry for being way late men, my time is getting different priorities atm, Hope to contribute a bit faster in the future after a month orso. All of what you see as a problem isn't really that much different than water evaporating.. Blocks loosing weight = damage = to be set aside and checked. You can have a safe life operation time and abnormal forces on block to be checked in one way or another.. These inspections/repairs are not that different than water evaporating, during extreme weather conditions. It's just a focus on different weather conditions making the system less or more efficient that hydro would be.

Imo the main problem is up-scaling. The price for blocks that it brings (let alone the CO2 footprint to create blocks compared to water, possibly only beneficial depending on geological scarcity of water, BlackX had a point you've neglected).. An energy vault will be depleted somewhere in the winter in any case and is but a supplement for western needs. Just use it when it's less windy and use different buffers when it's windy. The tech is meant for either islands with high fossil energy costs (remote islands) or meant as a buffer without long term losses supplementing different seasonal systems. The lack of energy loss, makes it useful as summer energy to be stored and used at the end of the winter.

Think about this. Actually made be think a bit further to have home blocks to be lifted into flats just before the end of the summer, in order to use its energy in late winter and redistribute them back into their summer position in late winter... Now that would be fucking awesome




Why is the EU in the middle east? This is only post 9-11 article 5 bullshitary, creating ISIS, fucking up Syria, making Afghanistan a mess. And right now the EU is going into the straight of Hormuz because the US fucked up the Iran deal, ty for that!. Why are we spending billions on a military when the US pushing the middle east into instability giving the EU a massive immigration stream ?? Fuck you men, we'd be better off without the brain dead US interventions atm. I'd buy gas at a higher price for the sake of the value of any life and stability in the middle east.. The arrogance of thinking you are contributing needs to be slammed hard.

before we can come to an agreement again.

This post was edited by Knoppie on Dec 17 2019 06:44pm

Sure, it might have some application in very specific circumstances, but it's not going to be something useful as a mass deployment energy storage system. One of the big issues is there was a push a year or two ago for these to be paired with windmills.... which are at their best efficiency in the exact conditions that render cranes inoperable.

Can't argue with that. It can only be a small part of the puzzle, or would be useless for our needs.