Energy surplus

Say energy plants produce energy that is stored in massive city sized batteries, and cities get their energy from these batteries.  You can extend these "battery" plants indefinitely, limited only by how much space they take up and how energy they store in that space.  You can extend this to island batteries, battery complexes in remote parts of the world, and space battery stations.  Any type of energy can go in, so solar, hydro, coal, gas, and nuclear can all add to storage. 

What would be wrong with this system?  What would make it innefficient?  What amount of energy would be wasted in energy transportation, storage life, and redistribution of energy (a middleman instead of directly from the plant).  How long could you keep surplus battery energy?  Could you store enough to offset any losses in efficiency? 

Your energy transmission cost would be extensive.  How do you get energy to and from satellite batteries?  How do you transmit energy across oceans in its "electrical" form?

One of the reasons energy generation is always done locally is because of the inefficiencies of transmission.  If transmission were efficient across oceans, we'd do it.  It turns out that it's much more efficient to transport energy in its concentrated form (aka fuel) than to transport energy in its electrical form.

How would you generate all this surplus energy?  Where would you build your power plants?  What sorts of power plants would you build?  Where would you get the money to do it?  How would you convince the entire state of Cali-"Not in My Backyard"-fornia to  go along with your idea?  Remember that you want power plants geographically close to the major energy consumption nodes to minimize loss due to transmission inefficiency.

Your proposal is fundamentally flawed.  Your questions imply that you're getting way ahead of yourself.  Don't worry about storing enough to offset losses due to inefficiency when you haven't supplied a scenario for generating sufficient power.  Remember that there are *reasons* all of the cutesy "earth-friendly" power plants don't get built.  Nobody's willing or able to foot the bill, few people will pay the extra $.10/KwH for "green" energy on their home bill, and very few communities are willing to allow the construction of any sort of power plant in their communities.  Windmills, after all, are great big bird-blenders.  Hydroplants destroy spawning grounds because fish have a hard time getting through or get chopped up.  Nuclear power is irrationally feared because morons think that the clean steam flying out the cooling tower is radioactive (duuuuh), and I don't think I have to explain why no one wants coal and oil plants in their neighborhoods.

And this is just a basic layman's problems.  I'm sure politicos could come up with a dozen more issues regarding the int'l cooperation that'd be required for something like this.

The battery plants are located next to power plants, while cities draw energy from the battery plants through regular power lines.  When the batteries are at a certain percentage, power drain is routed to the power plants directly.  Or, plants provide to the city and excess energy to surplus storage.  The batteries store energy from already existing plants, and are used like silos when needed.  The use of windmills and solar energy to help generate energy means that these forms of power can be used for energy storage to be used later, rather than  a city having to actually rely on solar energy primarily. 

There would be no "over air" transmission of energy.  Space satellites would gather solar energy and store it in batteries, while nearby stations can hook up and drain its energy.  

On Earth, battery stations would still rely on local plants, but excess energy not used by the city would be stored, just as any resource is stored, such as oil or food.  There needs to be an efficient means of converting stored energy to useable energy.  

>>3

You still fail to address the issues that >>2 raised.  You don't propose any viable means to produce all this excess energy.

Existing plants.  Even if it's 1% of the plant's total production per day.  The plant charges batteries gradually over time, until it reaches capacity.  Gradual energy sources such as solar are ideal for this as they charge the battery over time without costing much energy initially.  There's also "non-peak" hours when a plant can produce what it needs to a city, with the difference from peak hours being used to charge the battery.  Like a silo that gets filled with 5% of a crop per yield, gradually storing more until full. 

I'll play devil's advocate here.

energy transmission cost would be extensive.

use existing power lines.  the only additional energy transmitted would be surplus anyways, so loss is irrelevent.

How would you generate all this surplus energy?

power plants that normally operate at less than full capacity would be operated more near full capacity.

I'm not saying this is a good idea, just that we should take time to seriously think about all ideas before writing them off as stupid. 

Holy lord above: is this topic boring.

Analogy: HTTP servers can be saturated, as they are single point to multipoint.  How then can we solve the bandwidth problem?  Distribute the bandwidth.

Instead of trying to generate excess power into one central area, how about we generate excess power in multiple areas (e.g. at customer homes via solar panels) and store them in said multiple areas?  We don't have to use solar panels.  For all I care, you could make small generators that are fuelled by stupidity.  The idea remains the same.

Why not perpetual motion?

>>9

thermodynamics lol

>>10

Well, someone came close to building one. 92% working. Once you have 110% or smth you get full perpetual motion.

But I see what you did there.

Energy can't be created or destroyed.

>>12
you fucking five year old thread bumping bastard, fuck off

Transmission problem:
Using a non-cryogenic superconductor, you spread a big sheet of it at the equator and a sheet in Yellow Knife, with a wire made of it connecting the two. Q: How thick must the wire be to keep the Canucks warm?