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Old windmills wouldn't particularly store energy. For example they would only grind grain when the wind was blowing.

Or they would pump water into a tank when the wind was blowing.

Modern windmills generally generate electricity. For commercial windmills they are attached to the "Grid" which they treat somewhat as a battery. There still is risk of uneven power generation which would need to be evened out with either a storage method (some have suggested using battery powered automobiles as a "battery bank", or used with a complementary generation system that could be easily varied. For example hydro-electric may allow some diurnal variation in generation. It could still be a problem if there were many days of very high or very little wind.

Off grid systems are usually connected to some kind of a charge controller and then dumped into a battery bank. There is a risk of overcharging the batteries, and it is suggested to have some kind of a "dump load" such as an electric heater that can waste excess electricity without disconnecting the windmill from a "load device".

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15y ago

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