Oh, and by the way, Hasbeen, the wave power project was in Portugal, not Spain.
Newsflash - they're two different countries.
There's that pesky reality, getting in the way of your theories again.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Anthonyve mentions the solar trough and salt storage but it does not
solve what happens next morning when the day is solid overcast and
there is little or no wind.
As for waves, strange but calm seas often occur when there is no wind.

For hydro first catch water that you can waste generating electricity.
I seriously doubt that there is anywhere near the capacity in Australia
for it to be anywhere near sufficient. There are not many Snowies here.
Unless we stop the export of energy we will not have enough to run the
economy and build the new energy system which may take 50 years to do.

I am afraid the politicians will leave it too late to do a fix and then
there will be a rush to build nuclear power stations.
They do not yet acknowledge the problem, let alone discuss a solution.

Okay, taking your points, Bazz, one at a time.

Solar - you're right, the NaCl concept isn't a complete storage solution, but it's certainly part of it.

Wave - actually, you are not quite right here. In fact, the sea is ALWAYS in motion. The Portuguese project works via a series of knuckle-like joints that generate kinetic energy from whatever direction they move, and anything in the sea is always in motion, unless tethered. For an example, have you ever been on a motionless boat on the sea? Lakes and rivers, yes, the sea, no.

Hydro - here you miss my point. The project involves using excess energy during high production periods to pump water from a low level to a high level. During low solar production periods the water is allowed to flow back down and this is the hydro generation phase. In fact, it's effectively a closed loop, i.e. the same water is used over and over again, pumped up when excess energy is available, i.e. during the sunlit periods, and flowing down as a hydro source during non-sunny periods.

As for your thoughts about nuclear, I agree. I'm sure it will happen exactly as you suggest.
When it's too late we'll be stuck with nuclear.
So annoying when the science is established for the alternatives and in most cases the remaining problems are engineering ones, not concept ones.
Ah well...
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Ahh yes,
Anthony: Wave actually,
Well that is the problem the range of waves is very wide and even at
the lower levels would produce much less than the peak level.
The ratio of time could be min to max about 10 times.
The Portuguese snake had a problem. Scotland is trying again.
Tide flow might be a better option.

Hydro, yes granted, but efficiency is not brilliant due to losses in
pumping up and generating on the way down, 50% ?
Also civil engineering cost would be very high.
Which I suspect it why hydro is normally associated with dam projects.

Lets hope renewable does happen, if nothing ever evolved we would be still driving T model fords.
Nuclear is not a good way to go, we can't even agree on a dump.
There's an eighteen foot rise in tide in North WA.
Oil and Coal have to go for long term viability.
The savings on oil alone would finance vast arrays of solar, and wind.
Algae can be grown for food as well as fuel, without soil.
The potential has got to be unlimited, all it needs is the doing

Since I was 14 about 35 years ago, I have been following the renewable energy endeavour, and the common thread is how wind power, solar and wave power were progressing and were soon to become as cheap as fossil fuel generation. It was one of the reasons I became an electrical engineer and spent much of my career on power generation, distribution and consumption.

What we have today is still the same technical issues that faced us decades ago, primarily wind is inconsistent and sporadic at best, the sun only shines during cloudless daylight, and wave generation gets beaten to scrap in a storm. The links to Spain's renewables adventure has skipped the point that burden of paying for these toys has fallen on Spain's consumers and manufacturers, and helped blow out debt and unemployment to record levels.

What they have shown is what we already knew is that the unreliability of renewables meant that Spain still had to pay top dollar to buy base load while paying huge sums for off peak generation. The only generation that came anywhere near base load (the hot salt solar storage) being several times more expensive than nuclear ever would have been.

The only country in the world that has reduced GHG emissions and has cheap power is France with over 80% of it generation from Nuclear. The rest of us are just fiddling while fossils burn.