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Comment by wongarsu

1 year ago

Pumped hydro is really great at scale, and it's a shame we don't build more of it. But it needs at least a substantial hill, with the ability to build a reservoir at the top and at the bottom (ideally just a natural lake at the bottom). The Netherlands is a uniquely bad place for them due to being famously flat.

Hawaii on the other hand could probably do some really effective pumped hydro plants. I wonder why the have so many battery installations instead?

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wongarsu

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jonkoops  1 year ago

Aside from being flat we also lack space, we live with the water so it needs space to flow into places that are not populated. This means large swaths of land are dedicated to what is essentially overflow capacity. Perhaps there is some energy that could be extracted in the process, but it makes it very hard for it to be a reliable backup.

Pepe1vo  1 year ago

It is in fact possible to benefit from pumped hydro even if you have no significant height differences in a certain area. How? By creating a basin inside of an existing body of water and emptying/filling when there's over/under supply of electricity.

I remember reading a couple of years ago that there were plans to construct such a "valmeer" inside of the Ijsselmeer, but I can't find much about it now so no idea whether it's been canned or not.

dingnuts  1 year ago

>Pumped hydro is really great at scale

What's your citation on this? I've spoken to a few civil engineers on this topic and they just laugh and say people that promoting pumped hydro haven't done the math and do not realize the size/scale of the mechanisms that they are proposing, and that they are thus not at all feasible.

I don't think you can just say "pumped hydro is really great at scale" sans evidence.

  • HankB99  1 year ago

    I think that any claim required evidence and pumped storage is included.

    We visited the "Power Vista" near Niagara falls (US side) where they have 13 turbines driven off the water that would otherwise fall over a cliff. What I did not previously know was that the facility includes pumped storage. There is a reservoir above the generator turbines that they can pump water into from the supply of water that would normally drive the turbines. I questioned the staff about this - particularly if it fit into the expansion of solar and wind. I don;t understand the answers I got.

    * The station used to be base loaded but no longer is. That makes no sense to me unless they have to restrict flow to maintain a minimum flow over the falls.

    * They don't use the pumped storage to store energy from other renewables (including the power station itself.) They will draw it down during the summer months to maintain the minimum flow over the falls.

    It was interesting to see but I wonder why they don't run base loaded or make more use of the pumped storage. NB, I'm not an expert WRT generation of distributing load and I may not have been talking to the right people.