On: Growth in wind power makes life difficult for grid managers

[artpop]

What about pumping water uphill, then using turbines to catch it coming down when it is desirable to do so.

[thingie → artpop]

Of course. That's very common approach and there are many such power plants ("storage"). But as you can imagine, this cannot be built anywhere, cheaply enough and in large enough quantities.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Dlouhe_st..., 2 × 325 MW for 6 hours when full, ~250 millions EUR to build)

[chopsueyar → artpop]

Smith Mountain Lake around Roanoke, VA.

656MW of power generation/storage, built for $103 million in the early 1960s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Mountain_Dam

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity