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.