Proposal: Use wind power technology for energy storage. When you have excess power, you run a really large fan, increasing the overall amount of wind so you can draw it back as electricity later using a windmill. Using a similar principle you could also use wind for power transmission, by pointing the fan in a particular direction
@mcc batteries that are just really, really big mainsprings
@mcc imagining the timeline where nobody figured out chemical batteries and so all electrical capacitors everywhere run on clockwork
materials science is less interested in finding room-temperature semiconductors and more in finding materials for making the smallest, sturdiest springs possible
@theryusui @mcc have you read The Windup Girl and the shorter fiction it grew out of?
@theryusui @mcc the novel itself is fantastic far beyond the proposed technology. One of my favorite reads in the last decade.
@theryusui @mcc the devices that electricians refer to as capacitors are a secret third option which generally use neither chemical battery reactions nor moving parts.
@jeremy_list @theryusui I was trying to remember if someone had attempted to solve the battery/storage problem by just building a really really big capacitor but then I remembered I was thinking of the movie "Batman Returns"
@theryusui @mcc this is basically the premise of _the windup girl_ by paolo bacigalupi, which i enjoyed