Comment by 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.
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.
The scale is small compared to the area available in some places.
Example: a planned 8 GWh pumped hydro facility in Ely, Nevada. It's tiny compared to the landscape around it.
https://www.whitepinepumpedstorage.com/