Power from wind turbines is going to be interesting, when there is a lot of wind they are able to generate power at lower prices then gas (the cheapest fossil fuel) This will make the gas fired plants less economic as there is no sense in generating power at a loss, one would hope that those savings are passed onto the consumer. When the wind is not blowing they will pass on this extra cost onto the consumer. This would make the building of more wind turbines cost effective. Assuming there is a free market without subsidies...
My guess is that if nothing else changes, in the long term the result will be that there will be more power outages unless there is going to be government regulation and/or subsidies for hydro/(bio)gas/nuclear/coal plants to run on standby.
Edit:
So the short answer to your question is yes, you can do as you suggested, but there are better options available. The best place for solar is on buildings, not only is the energy close to the end user, the grid infrastructure is already in place, reducing the connection costs. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that wind and solar can not go together, but it seems wasteful to take up useful land while there is otherwise unused space available.
The next development I hope to see is solar panels that take up the whole roof, doing away with the need for any other forms of roofing. Current prices for solar panels is about 12 dollars per square foot and dropping about 20% every year. Still far more expensive then tar shingles, but tar shingles don't give you electrical energy and the solar panels do increase the resell value of the home.
Now there are other considerations as well, the challenge I believe will be economics. It already makes sense to install solar on the roof as you do get the money invested back when you sell the home and you do benefit from relatively cheap energy in the mean time. However the problem is going to be for the utility companies, if we remain connected to the grid (which is currently the cheapest option in urban area's, this will complicate their business model. Those who remain "on grid" will likely see price increases when battery cost drop . (They will still have to pay for the infrastructure maintenance.) Battery cost is what prevents me personally from putting solar on my roof and the local utility company does not like their customers to go "grid tie". If I was living in a rural area, then even the currently high cost of the batteries, might well be cheaper then paying for the connection cost.
If you are really interested in the economic side have a look at the wikipedia entry [1] and this daily finance article[2]. It will be obvious things are going to change away from fossil fuels regardless what the energy companies do or don't do. No doubt there will be serious hiccups along the way but in a "free market" solar and/or wind combined with storage will "win"
I am a strong believer that the new energy sources are complementary. Why shouldn't wind and solar power generation facilities be located at the same place, if that place is favorable to both. And moreover, to become a carbon free society, green energy must be green energy powered.
A plant that makes solar panels could be powered with nuclear power instead of coal.
Mining trucks at a uranium mine could run on biodiesel.
A uranium processing plant could use wind power.
It doesn't really since individually none of them are particularly economical, so combining them doesn't make much sense its not as if you get some synergistic effect. The only benefit would be on reducing the cost of the land because you would need less square footage. Solar panels just don't generate that much electricity. Wind farms never break even (it costs much more in kilowatts to manufacture and maintain the damn thing that it will ever generate), biofuels ARE carbon. Seriously I got into a debate with someone once at university because they were insisting biofuels were the way to go to go carbon-free. I pointed out that everything biological is carbon based by definition, their eyes glazed over. Hydroelectric well your description of a system that pumps water up to a height and then lets it fall through a turbine to generate electricity would actually be an example of a perpetual motion machine which violates the laws of physics. Thermodynamics demands that it would take more energy to raise the water to said height than you would get out of it on the way down. Batteries would be completely impractical they would have to be massive. There is a reason Tesla cars most of the mass of the car is battery. In order to store enough energy to supply the grid these batteries would be the size of skyscrapers, which of course would take a lot of energy to manufacture.
I'm not against alternative energy solutions. We ARE running out of fossil fuels and this will be a problem by the end of the century if we don't find replacements. But lets find replacements that don't involve me living in a damn tree house. This is one of my (many) gripes with what I see as misguided environmentalism. We're running out of time, but people are so wrapped up in ideology that we are wasting precious time and money on projects to replace fossil fuels that are just not going to work. We need viable replacements and we need them now, and they aren't getting the research they need because we're chasing some fantasy.
Yes if you have 10.000 hectares spare why not, hmm how many towers would you need, how high would they have to be? how much would they cost, how much wind would they deflect? how much shade for the solar would they cause, apart from towers you also have to equivalent water storage at ground level, come on Chem think about it, it is not feasible
Now if every home and business/factory had solar panels linked to the grid, plus a wind turbine, that could help a lot, plus you dont have to worry about more overhead power lines and transformers, plus that small generating plant is spread all over the country, meaning it is less affected by local weather conditions.
it makes sense to a certain extent, like using Co-generation power plants where waste heat is used. There is diminishing returns as there is no perpetual motion machines. Efficiency and conversion loses have to be taken into consideration.
using wind energy and storing the excess in hydroelectric dams is already done
Strange question from someone who wouldn't dare question the "experts" when it comes to AGW.
The problem right now in coming up with viable alternatives is the removal of incentives caused by government intervention and false "it has to be a solution to AGW" requirements.
Has nothing to do with the question just like climate scientist's conclusions aren't above question simply because they are scientist regardless of the questioners profession or education. While your not an electrical engineer I don't pretend or propose that your suggestions are invalid based on the fact that if they were viable options engineers would have thought of it before you. I actually like that your questioning whether or not there are better ways to produce energy. I just wish you could understand that kind of innovation isn't going to happen by government mandate to solve a made up crisis.
Sure, but you have to consider cost. Why pump when you can use a passive structure? In other words it would take more energy to raise the head then you'd gain from release.
This has already been thought out. Its a HVDC hub system, with the gain coming from less transmission loss (~30%). Fairly basic stuff that's out in the real world already.
Both have been proven to be ineffectual. Just study Germany. They went to wind power and shut down nuclear reactors. Then they didn't have enough power. So now they are frantically building coal plants. Ha! Ha! Dum Kopfs.
Would it make sense to put wind turbines on solar installations? Solar panels on wind turbines? Can the land on a "wind farm" be used to grow a biofuel crop? Can multiple power sources be hooked up to a single installation for "gravity storage" of surplus energy (basically, instead of storing energy in batteries, you use the energy to pump water to the top of a tower, then run the water down through a hydroelectric generator when you need the stored energy)? Are there any other ways we can or should combine various sources of alternate/renewable energy in single installations?
