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Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

theguardian.com

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Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#21

Post by FFP999 »

londons_explore wrote: post #3

Not stated in the article: There are very few places in the world with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much distance. Wherever that happens, it is probably financially a good idea to build one of these. But that geography is really rather rare, so the rest of the world will probably have to use gas peaker plants (environment-killing) or battery storage (expensive).

Is there any reason that "lakes" (i.e. big holes) can't be dug where they would be useful for this purpose?

(Update: for those who are downvoting, it was a serious question.)

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#22

Post by FFP999 »

Neil44 wrote: post #6
Dachande663 wrote: post #5

I had the luck to visit this as a child, before all the tourist side of it was shut down. I remember taking the bus past the giant turbine hall. A few facts I can remember: 1. Carol Vorderman did a lot of the engineering calculations, before she started on Countdown (probably only relevant to the UK lot). 2. They couldn't run powerlines from the facility to the grid as it's an AONB so they had to run them underground…

Sounds like we did a similar set of school trips, I remember standing in a big loud hall on top of the Sellafield reactor, and down inside electric mountain by the big turbines. I was most sad that they don't do tours at the moment, I wanted to take my daughter there.

You may not have heard, but they had a little trouble there at one point, I wouldn't take a kid there.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#23

Post by ttul »

The Kemano generating station in British Columbia was built in the 1950s to supply power to an aluminum smelter. They hollowed out a mountain to drop a river through turbines. It’s an incredible marvel of engineering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemano_Generating_Station

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#24

Post by cesarb »

londons_explore wrote: post #3

Not stated in the article: There are very few places in the world with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much distance. Wherever that happens, it is probably financially a good idea to build one of these. But that geography is really rather rare, so the rest of the world will probably have to use gas peaker plants (environment-killing) or battery storage (expensive).

> There are very few places in the world with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much distance.

You only need one large lake (or a place which can be dammed to create one); the other one can be completely artificial, with no water inflow or outflow other than through the pumps/turbines. In fact, I think it might even be possible to make both reservoirs completely artificial, and fill them by pumping water from somewhere else. That makes the necessary geography a lot less rare; you only need the appropriate height difference, and the ability to create artificial reservoirs on both ends.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#25

Post by ajb »

FFP999 wrote: post #21
londons_explore wrote: post #3

Not stated in the article: There are very few places in the world with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much distance. Wherever that happens, it is probably financially a good idea to build one of these. But that geography is really rather rare, so the rest of the world will probably have to use gas peaker plants (environment-killing) or battery storage (expensive).

Is there any reason that "lakes" (i.e. big holes) can't be dug where they would be useful for this purpose? (Update: for those who are downvoting, it was a serious question.)

Well at least one of these was originally a quarry, so yes. But it would raise the cost a lot, if the excavate wasn't valuable as in this case.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#26

Post by colanderman »

Massachusetts has a pumped storage station in the Berkshires, Bear Swamp. [1] As of a few years ago they had an underground visitor's center with a scale model and lots of info. Not sure whether it's open anymore though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Swamp_Hydroelectric_Power...

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#27

Post by nicky0 »

FFP999 wrote: post #22
Neil44 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we did a similar set of school trips, I remember standing in a big loud hall on top of the Sellafield reactor, and down inside electric mountain by the big turbines. I was most sad that they don't do tours at the moment, I wanted to take my daughter there.

You may not have heard, but they had a little trouble there at one point, I wouldn't take a kid there.

Are you referring to the Windscale fire of 1957, or something else?

I remember visiting the Sellafield visitor centre as a kid in the 1990s. It was great.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#28

Post by bee_rider »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19
londons_explore wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moss Landing, CA is the worlds largest battery. It is 3.0GWh, and has been operating 2 months. However, Dinorwig, UK is far larger at 9.1 GWh, and is 40 years old.

For comparison, you could build a replacement for Dinorwig with less than 1 quarter (12 weeks) of Tesla's single Megafactory annual output, and have it installed in less than a year, in any geography (assuming you're ready to run copper and pour slabs; storage enclosures can be installed in parallel, it's trucks, cranes, and human labor bolting them down). Timelines go down as battery manufacturing scales up. TBMs an…

A quarter worth of production from the Megafactory sounds pretty expensive.

I mean somebody should make a giant battery backup, but Dinorwig does have a pretty big advantage in terms of existing-ness.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#29

Post by bee_rider »

uticus wrote: post #15

> So, after all those television-watching Britons go to bed, Dinorwig’s generators are run backwards. > It’s a remarkably efficient process, with about 75% of the energy available for reuse. Not an (hardware) engineer, so wondering: are turbines typically efficient running both ways? Or would a turbine in this scenario have tradeoffs compared to turbines that are designed for running in one direction only? The best I…

It couldn’t be much worse, right? Otherwise they’d have just installed another turbine facing in the other direction.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

bee_rider wrote: post #28
toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison, you could build a replacement for Dinorwig with less than 1 quarter (12 weeks) of Tesla's single Megafactory annual output, and have it installed in less than a year, in any geography (assuming you're ready to run copper and pour slabs; storage enclosures can be installed in parallel, it's trucks, cranes, and human labor bolting them down). Timelines go down as battery manufacturing scales up. TBMs an…

A quarter worth of production from the Megafactory sounds pretty expensive. I mean somebody should make a giant battery backup, but Dinorwig does have a pretty big advantage in terms of existing-ness.

Existing power stations that are paid off have an advantage considering cost of capital (nuclear and pumped hydro), but that advantage eventually theta decays when maintenance costs exceed new build costs. France is experiencing this now with its aging nuclear fleet [1]. Running the math on Tesla's calculator [2], a quarter worth of annual production (10GWh) runs $3,798,849,522 (~$3.8B). That includes installation (per Tesla). Can new pumped hydro be built cheaper than that? For sure, keep existing low carbon generation or storage in service as long as commercially reasonable.

[1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-revises-up-c...

[2] https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design

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