decrepit said...

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>. UNLESS you mean that solar energy evaporates the water which condenses into clouds that fall as rain which is collected at elevation to store kinetic energy to be turned into power as the water falls through a turbine under gravity?

Of course, that's where the energy comes from, you'd soon run out of gravity if that's all you had.

What?

Cal said..
?

What?

If you only had a reservoir of water on top of a mountain, with no sun to create rain to fill it up again, you're not going to make much electricity.

Cal said..
Right, fair enough, but we do make hydro from man pumped water using various power sources.

A good way to store solar/wind power?

decrepit said..

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A fair component of wind energy is derived from the earths rotation. Which also serves to slow the earth down. Even without the sun, the internal stresses within a gas sitting on a rotating sphere would generate highs and lows.

Ian fascinating input, could you please expand on that, where/how do these stresses originate?
I've always wondered about the strength of Jupiter’s storms when it's so far from the sun, is this a similar case?

Can't expand too much on it. I think the maths and physics would get complicated pretty quickly. But a mass of air over Tasmania for instance would want to rotate with a Foucault pendulum in Tasmania rather than Tasmania itself. There was once an exhibit at the Canberra Questacon that showed how unhappy fluids are going around in harmony with rotating spheres.