Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by FFP999 » Thu, Nov 02, 2023, 9:20 PM UTC

hwillis wrote: post #57

FFP999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

1. The lower lake still needs to be substantially above sea level and the local water table etc. so that it can actually be drained and so that it doesn't just fill up with local water. You can't do this by the hoover dam, since you'd also have to lower the river another few dozen meters. That's more challenging than it sounds, since you'd have to continue digging all along its path until you reached the place that t…

Thanks; I guess if it were that simple, someone would have done it, being as neither pumped storage nor earthmoving are new technology.

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

#62

Post by Neil44 » Thu, Nov 02, 2023, 9:51 PM UTC

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.

What are you referring to?

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

#63

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Nov 02, 2023, 10:37 PM UTC

uticus wrote: post #50

bee_rider wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have no idea. I can easily imagine a turbine being a good chunk of the installation BOM cost and budget constraints saying price recoup in x years that extra parts doesn't balance against. And in this scenario, then no, another turbine facing the other direction would not be an option - though it is only efficient one way.

That’s fair.

You were clearly looking for an answer from somebody who knew something about the field, but I decided (for some reason) to come in with, like, over simplified first principles speculation. I hate it when people do what I did, haha. Sorry!

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

#64

Post by p1mrx » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 2:05 AM UTC

sambeau wrote: post #60

londons_explore wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so... You would presumably be pumping air from one sphere to the other. That air ends up compressing/decompressing, and therefore heating or getting cold. That dramatically lowers efficiency. And on top of that, a football stadium sized sphere full of compressed air at the bottom of the ocean is going to need hold-down anchors at a scale the world has never seen...

> "The general idea is to have a closed vessel sitting on the seafloor. Surplus energy is then used to pump water out of this vessel, leaving the inside at a near-vacuum. When it’s desired to recover energy from the system, water can be allowed to flow back into the vessel under the pressure generated by the seawater above. As the vessel is filled, the water flowing in turns a turbine, generating electricity in just…

That's an interesting way to store energy, basically a vacuum chamber that operates in 75 atm water, instead of 1 atm air.

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

#65

Post by _kb » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:10 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

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).

Keep an eye on Australia, Snowy 2 (whose costs are blowing out) [1], and battery uptake [2]. Based on cost decline curves of lithium scale utility storage, batteries will be cheaper by the time Snowy is commissioned. Battery manufacturing is ramping because every automaker is being forced to electrify, Tesla is preparing to build a second Megafactory factory for battery storage in China [3], and batteries can be inst…

If you're watching Australia, there's also this further up north: https://qldhydro.com.au/.

The Borumba site will provide 2,000MW generation with 48GWh of storage and works are starting now.

Meanwhile Pioneer-Burdekin is currently scoped as 5,000MW with 120GWh (not a typo) of storage. Assuming it proceeds to that spec it will be the largest pumped hydro station out there.