Can solar power be stored as kinetic energy?
Question by I. C. Warming: Can solar power be stored as kinetic energy?
For instance, if a solar powered winch lifted a weight, could the subsequent downward motion of that weight drive an electric generator that operated after dark?
Or is there some other efficient way to store solar power that is not about a battery, or about just storing heat?
Best answer:
Answer by Joheye
You could use a capacitor but that is just about as inefficient as a battery. Storing energy is really tricky because it is so inefficient. You could heat up a substance to a extremely high temperature and use that to boil water to convert it to steam to power a generator. That would be better than a gigantic battery.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
The fuel cell is probably the best way of storing the energy, but costly. Use solar power to separate oxygen & hydrogen in water, then burn the hydrogen to turn a generator when it’s dark, creating water again.
yes,solar charged dynamo bikes
Absolutely. One way would be to power a pump to store water at elevation and then have it turn a turbine when you needed electricity
yes solar power can be stored as kinetic energy.
Yes. Solar energy can be collected and stored in batteries, reflected, insulated, absorbed and transmitted. You shall be able to find your answers in the following web.
http://ca.search.yahoo.com/search?p=Quoted%20facts%20of%20how%20solar%20power%20is%20stored
Yes, but the problem is efficiency losses in almost any conversion process, and the Solar is already very inefficient to start with.
You can use some type of collector. A set of pipes that fits into a copper or metallic flat plate that has been insulated inside a box under glass. The sun streaming through the glass produces heat in the plate, which is then directed into the liquid in the pipes. This is known as a “Flat Plate Collector.