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Comment by XorNot

18 hours ago

Pumped hydro storage only holds about 8-12 hours of power. To be economically viable to build you need to cycle it daily.

It uses enormous amounts of land and capital to build, and is ongoingly dangerous in a unique way. If LiFePO4 can do 4 hours at full output already, and be placed anywhere using volume manufacturing to expand, then batteries are straight up better.

Pumped hydro is an expensive dead end.

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XorNot

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peterashford  16 hours ago

In NZ we're discussing pumped hydro in Lake Onslow which will provides months of backup for the country

  • hunterpayne  10 hours ago

    Each way you move the energy costs you 50% in efficiency. Which is why pumped hydro has to have a 4x different in the price of energy in vs energy out to make it economically viable. That's why PG&E almost never uses their pumped storage. Only on days where the mid day price of power is very low does it make sense. And keep in mind that California is the ideal place for pumped storage. I seriously doubt that NZ has a 3x duck curve in its energy demand.

    • tialaramex  3 hours ago

      It's nowhere close to 50%. Round-trip (so that's after both ways) efficiency is about 70-80% for a pumped storage scheme. Buy 10MW to pump the water, and get back 7-8MW when you release it. Contrast that with a reality here in the UK where the gas dominated spot price this morning when I woke up was about £180 per MWh, yet yesterday afternoon solar and wind had it down to £25 per MWh, so you could buy 100MWh of energy for £2500 but sell it less than a day later and make 400% on your investment in under 24 hours despite the efficiency loss. Very silly to insist this can't be profitable.

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