Wind, Water, and DC: Generate, Store, Transmit

dewarrn1 writes: The Economist summarizes a proposal by Jürgen Schmid of ISET who suggests that the efficiencies realized by converting the EU's long-distance electricity transmission to DC would allow temporary surpluses of power to be stored at remote hydroelectric facilities. This would mean that peaks and valleys in variable sources of power, e.g., wind and solar, could be smoothed out by pumping water back into remote reservoirs in high-production periods and recovering that power in high-demand or low-output periods later. Some small scale efforts to introduce DC transmission are reported.