Hey Cain or Faust

[Faust]

As regards storage of excess capacity:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140106094557.htm

If we choose to manufacture methane as a way to store capacity, we already have an infrastructure to handle that output.
Admittedly a goodly bit gets lost in the hydrogen-to-methane process.

That's a really cool idea, most of the energy produced is wasted because of our inability to store it.

The conversion/storage process may not be scalable to the quantities we're looking at for storage of wind or surplus grid, but it's definitely a technology that should be further investigated.

[Reginald Ret]

Simple and fascinating. May be usable in space/on other planets?

[Left]

Simple and fascinating. May be usable in space/on other planets?

Would need to be able to get ice and carbon to make methane...

Thinking also that hydrogen would be somewhat safer to stick in a storage tank if said tank were sited in vacuum.
It'd leak some, of course, just not explode due to leaking, as it would in atmosphere.

Don't recall thinking about how crucial finding exoplanetary ice might possibly become. 
Not just for drinking, it's also a ready fuel and oxy source.
...Cool that India found ice on the moon...

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-03-03/india/28143143_1_water-ice-india-s-chandrayaan-1-mini-sar