Incredible place, while at Bangor university I did my dissertation on electric mountain and now spend my weekend hiking round Snowdonia. Lovely part of the world
Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
31–40 of 65 posts
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#32I 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…
If you are ever up in Scotland, you can still visit Cruachan - the sister power station at Loch Awe with a very similar design. I took my children there two months ago. They were as amazed as I hoped they would be! Visiting hours here: https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/
If you are a Harry Potter fan, it's not far from Loch Awe to the famous viaduct at Glenfinnan as well. Details here: https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/glenfinnan-monument/high...
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#33Not 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).
[dead]
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#34Not 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).
Counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...
They only started with a single lake and a moderate amount of elevation.
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s really not a lot of point these days. Batteries can be used for load balancing and pump-storage is very inefficient.
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.
SSE are also hoping to build Coiri Glas in Scotland, which is 30GWh
https://www.sse.com/news-and-views/2023/03/britain-s-largest...
Cruachan 2 will take total site capacity to 1GWh https://www.drax.com/about-us/our-projects/cruachan-2/
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#36I 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…
If you are ever up in Scotland, you can still visit Cruachan - the sister power station at Loch Awe with a very similar design. I took my children there two months ago. They were as amazed as I hoped they would be! Visiting hours here: https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/ If you are a Harry Potter fan, it's not far from Loch Awe to the famous viaduct at Glenfinnan as well. Details here: https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/place…
If you are a Star Wars fan, Cruachan is the location of The Empire’s base in Andor.
As a Scot, who’s done a lot of hillwalking in the past (and been scared witless by airforce jets suddenly appearing over the brim of a hill) it was amazing to see tie-fighters whooshing across the Scottish landscape.
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s really not a lot of point these days. Batteries can be used for load balancing and pump-storage is very inefficient.
We should do all of it at the same time. Diversity and over provisioning is a way to have options and redundancy.
The U.K. needs something like 30 TWh of storage (the National Grid has 50 TWh in their plan).
We’d need thousands of these.
They’re great for load balancing, especially when coupled with compressed air to get them generating within seconds, but we’d have to flood all the glens of Scotland and Wales to make a dent in our needs.
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#38Earlier 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.
SSE are also hoping to build Coiri Glas in Scotland, which is 30GWh https://www.sse.com/news-and-views/2023/03/britain-s-largest... Cruachan 2 will take total site capacity to 1GWh https://www.drax.com/about-us/our-projects/cruachan-2/
We need more like 30
TWh of storage to secure the grid without fossil fuels.
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#39Czech Republic also has a pumped-storage plant in Dlouhé stráně[0]. It's also in a protected landscape and in my opinion looks amazing [1], especially when you descend from Praděd. It's one of the only large scale industrial projects in Czech Republic that is on a world-class level.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dlouh%C3%A9_str%C3%A1n%C4%9B_H...
[1]http://turystyka.studentnews.pl/img/wo/3/58/Elektrownia-wodn...
Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure
#40Not 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.)
I’ve seen a suggestion that you could use two spheres in the sea one deep down, one
near the surface.