Germany has many large wind mills. The gear boxes and generators are expensive. The problem is there is no way of storing the energy. When the wind blows there is not always a need for the power.

Here is a relatively low cost way of storing the energy. The wind turbines are used as water pumps similar to oil pumps. No gear box.
No generator. The generator is replaced by a simple large water tank on top of the pylon to store the energy.

The ground level water tank can be a lake. The water is recycled.

Many turbines can feed the same generator.

Paul & Robin Lamar in Germany

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Hi Paul;

It's a good idea - called pumped storage hydro that is not used as much as it could-should be for load balancing the grid...
There are a few examples of coupled PSH + nuclear running 100% of the time to good effect to effectively double peak output for a fractional increase in capital costs.
Conservation is only lip service...some foolish generators actually PAY others to take excess power!

Cheers
Cary



In many places, such as the wind farms in Tehachapi, the windmills are already on hills in order to make the most of the available winds. In those locations, you wouldn't have to build tanks on the windmill pylons. You can take advantage of the natural elevation of the hilly areas to achieve the same thing.

Of course, the round-trip energy efficiency of the water pumping and hydroelectric generation is probably only 50 percent, but that's better that's a lot better than nothing.

Csaba Csere

I might add the higher the water storage the greater the potential energy recovery.
I know you know that Csaba so that is for the none engineer among us.

Paul Lamar

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