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

Hi Paul,
Great idea. A variation of this has been used in England for many years. There is a hydro-electric dam/system (upper and lower reservoir) in the northern Welsh hills that provides power for the Liverpool area. During the day the power produced feeds the national grid and then late at night when power usage falls the "excess power" is used to pump water back up hill to the upper reservoir.
I am an advocate of renewal power but I believe that wide scale use of wind power has resulted in a blight on the landscape and resulted in adverse environmental impacts in some areas. If you have visited the area of Tehachapi, CA you will know what kind of visual "impact" wind mill development can have on an area. Imagine now a similar area in already crowded Germany!
Cheers
Mike Arthur

They are all over Germany already. In recent days, starting in Frankfurt, we drove to Nurnberg, then to Zwickha, then to Bad-Sooten-Allendorf and then back to Frankfurt. Probably over a 1000 Km at a speed of up to  100 MPH when possible:) None of the many wind mills we
saw had stored energy. Some of our green party friends claim 18% of Germany’s energy needs comes from wind. We also saw a
lot of solar. Solar uses good farm land.

Paul Lamar


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