351–360 of 397 posts
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Wouldn't you need two reservoirs in that case? Otherwise where is the water being drained down to take advantage of the potential energy?
Yes, of course. Off-river pumped hydro involves two reservoirs.
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> Obviously hydroelectricity is massively damaging to ecosystems. The whole of the human race is massively damaging to ecosystems. That bit isn't in doubt. The question is as to whether the benefits outweigh the costs. And naturally, humans get to be judge and jury on the matter. But hey, do you want to be able to get to work, afford that iPhone, or not?
What are you saying? Are you asking if the benefits of the human race outweigh the costs? Or of hydroelectricity? If it's the latter, I think OP clearly said that in his opinion hydro is a "no-brainer" in a minority of cases.
Having gotten that out of the way, my post was more intended to be along the lines of a curmudgeonly cynical sideswipe at political processes. Getting hydro schemes approved seems a lot like getting bypass routes approved. There's always going to be otters, pandas, or whatever going to be on the short end of the stick. In one interview of a route's detractors, I saw a Downs Syndrome girl shown on the telly. The route would go near the home where she was housed, and would consequently "get confused". I was sitting there, thinking to myself, "holy shit, talk about cynical manipulation. She doesn't even know she's on here."
So my post was more of a criticism against the detractors of such schemes, who I think favour emotional over a more sober analysis. It's too easy to sloganeer about "Won't someone pleeease think of the children".
In the end, there's no definitively right or wrong answer, of course. It's up to society to weight the benefits and costs. There's always trade-offs. Sometimes the trade-offs can be black-and-white, sometimes they are shades of grey.
Obviously hydroelectricity is massively damaging to ecosystems. My day job includes designing hydroelectric control systems and even I can admit that. That's a big part of the reason that hydro is a non-starter in much of the western world, which is probably a reasonably good thing (although there are certainly some exceptions where hydro development seems like a no-brainer to me but I digress) What's not so clear to…
Since you’re in the industry I’m interested in your perspective on this report from Lawrence Berkeley lab on integrated battery storage for wind/solar projects: https://emp.lbl.gov/hybrid It seems to me that high capacity integrated battery projects are being built in large numbers, and they are much closer to cost-competitive than I would have though from the general sentiment in the press/HN comments. Obviously the…
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/20/pge-says-tesla-battery-was...
I never understood why dams have suffered such a reversal of fortune. Maybe if the author did even the slightest bit of due diligence he would've found out most potential hydro sites in the West already have a dam on them. Without significant technological improvement hydro is effectively tapped-out already. IEEE is starting to match Medium for "I started and finished writing this article during the same session on t…
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> why we aren't pumping (pun intentional) massive amounts of money into hydroelectric pumped storage Because energy storage is currently not a problem, and consequently not profitable. Unless you have some very bold organization to invest on things that today make negative marginal profit on any scale, or a government rushing into the solution of tomorrow's problem with today's money, you won't see any action. It wil…
> Because energy storage is currently not a problem, and consequently not profitable. All the big pumped storage in the UK is owned by for-profit companies. Are they making the big money from running school tours? Maybe the gift shop? I don't think so. In the UK they can buy 1.5GWh of electricity for say £75000 on a windy Sunday night and then sell say 1.2GWh (pumped storage is maybe 80% efficient) for £200000 on Mon…
Maybe recent energy price increases has changed future reckoning though
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I think the main reason is that not everybody has the geography conducive for pumped Hydro. Here in Kansas we have a ton of wind energy production and we’re lucky enough to have a nuclear reactor as well. It’d really be nice to store that, but we have no mountains. We have a rolling plain in the middle of the state but even the highest/lowest delta is like 200-300 ft (I made that number up).
No need to think only within your own state borders. Germany has lots of wind farms and not much pump storage potential as well, they just send their surplus energy south to Austria for storage. Kansas could easily do the same with Colorado - ofc they would have to build more facilities first (afaik).
Ironically Colorado is a very hard partner to trade with. The major consumer (Denver) is in the center of the state. The entire eastern half is an empty plain and the western half of Kansas is a slightly less empty plain. From population center Kansas City to Denver is about 600miles, make energy trade a little impractical. They make a ton of their own wind energy on their open plain, and they were late adopters; they learned a lot from Kansas's expensive mistakes on wind power.
Hydro isn't unfashionable. We just don't have reasonable places to keep daming, so there's little really to talk about. Nuclear is unfashionable, because there's huge growth potential among wealthy industrial countries, but because it's not "liked" there's very little actual growth.
> Hydro isn't unfashionable. Its unfashionable for new capacity because much of the low-hanging fruit opportunities are plucked, and it has high upfront costs, and , while good from a climate and air pollution standpoint, it is still one of the most enviromentally destructive energy sources. Also, while it doesn’t induce climate change, it can be vulnerable to climate change.
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We do have a ton of salt caverns actually, many centrally located (Hutchison, Ks if you’re interested. Great air and space museum there too oddly enough)
Unfortunately, water has the nasty habit of dissolving salt. As the Lake Peigneur Disaster taught us, mixing the two is generally a really bad idea.
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Yes, of course. Off-river pumped hydro involves two reservoirs.
So at that point why use a river? Couldn't you just use ocean water? It's comparatively "free" and we aren't going to run out anytime soon.
I think those places are really rare though.
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No need to think only within your own state borders. Germany has lots of wind farms and not much pump storage potential as well, they just send their surplus energy south to Austria for storage. Kansas could easily do the same with Colorado - ofc they would have to build more facilities first (afaik).
We export power all over the Southwest Power Pool actually! SPP even trades with ERCOT when we can and help them out if they're short. Kansas is quite green, with about 65% coming from renewables (Mainly wind, then nuclear), but we're too far north for Solar to be {wildly profitable|cost effective}, and wind doesn't blow all the time. Given our climate, with temps as low as -32f in the winter, and 105f in the summer,…
If land is not overly expensive, then vertical bifacial solar can be quite viable. With snow or a light non-vegetated surface you should expect around 15% capacity factor in the worst month at 40 degrees and it will be skewed heavily towards morning/evening and slightly toward cloudy days compared to monofacial.
Doesn't get rid of the fossil fuels on its own, but should be cheap enough to displace most coal that remains after wind at a significant profit.