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Can Hoover Dam Become a Giant $3B Battery? (cleantechnica.com)
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power wants to spend $3 billion to pump back the water that's flowing through Hoover Dam -- so it can flow through again later, during periods of peak energy demand. This generates a net profit for the dam's operators -- the pumping stations are powered by cheap solar and wind energy, while the dams are currently operating at just 20% of their capacity. An anonymous reader quotes Clean Technica:
The problem is that California has so much renewable energy available now, thanks in large measure to aggressive state mandated policies, that much of it is "constrained." That's utility industry speak for having to give it away or simply let it go to waste. In some cases, utilities in California actually pay other utility companies to take the excess electricity off their hands.
Why not store it all in some of Elon Musk's grid scale batteries? Simply put, pumped hydroelectric storage is cheaper than battery storage, at least for now. Lazard, the financial advisory and asset management firm, estimates utility scale lithium-ion batteries cost 26 cents per kilowatt-hour compared with 15 cents for pumped hydro storage. "Hoover Dam is ideal for this," Kelly Sanders, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California tells the New York Times. "It's a gigantic plant. We don't have anything on the horizon as far as batteries of that magnitude."
Why not store it all in some of Elon Musk's grid scale batteries? Simply put, pumped hydroelectric storage is cheaper than battery storage, at least for now. Lazard, the financial advisory and asset management firm, estimates utility scale lithium-ion batteries cost 26 cents per kilowatt-hour compared with 15 cents for pumped hydro storage. "Hoover Dam is ideal for this," Kelly Sanders, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California tells the New York Times. "It's a gigantic plant. We don't have anything on the horizon as far as batteries of that magnitude."
HERBERT HOOVER oblig
Hoover Dam wasn't originally intended to produce power, it was for water management, such as flood control, supplying LA with a consistent water supply, and irrigation. Power was added later. I would guess pumped storage would have to balance the water management needs so it's not like you can just raise the water level and keep it there.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If you ask like that the answer must be no. But yes, you may have a snack.
Can Hoover dam be a $3B battery?
I guess the answer must be no.
I'm sorry but if you're bursting with unused power, just cryptomine it.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
In Europe, by the swiss, using surplus cheap nuclear power to pump water back in their dam and providing peak power at a premium when needed.
Sounds like due to renewables there is at times extra power that can be stored (by pumping water uphill.) You also need excess water to be pumped uphill. Does California also have this excess water? When you consider the value of the water, does it still make economic sense to put it back behind the dam? I don't know the answer or have an opinion on this, but I do keep hearing about water shortages in California, so it makes me wonder.
Except wind and solar are orders of magnitude cheaper and easier in every way than nuclear, but other than that yeah you're right. Using resources in combination make all more efficient than standalone.
And the Hoover's Lake Meade is obviously a much bigger reservoir, it's orders of magnitude bigger than Lake Dix on Switzerland's tallest dam. But you're right the concept is the same.
"That's one dam expensive battery."
I'll go home now.
How about just importing less energy and running the dam at a better capacity?
Use the waste heat from bitcoin mining to boil the ocean. the covection will carry water up into the hills providing rain to prevent fires and the ground water will end up in lake mead where it can be used to make electricity to power the mining systems
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If the water comes from the dam in the first place, wouldn't it be more efficient simply to leave it there until needed?
Just fill it with seawater.
The possibilities are endless.
Yeah those are peak prices for fixed and variable costs. But natural gas is still far cheaper. $3 NG for a combined cycle is 2.1 cents/kWh. 3.5 cents/kWh for a peaker. Batteries and pumped storage, even wind and solar, still cannot touch that. Which is why NG is 40% of baseload generation and coal is dying off. Only advantage of storage is immediacy. It still takes 10 minutes to get a gas turbine synced and producing MWs. Storage can help in certain areas, but will never compete at those prices.
Natural gas produces CO2, but far less than coal and it shows in total US CO2 emissions. We will be burning NG for decades.
I was just about to write this. Where does the LA power company plan to get the water to put into the reservoir? If it's from water that is running downstream then this seems rather silly. There are probably easier ways to waste out electricity, which is what that would be doing. And as you say, if you just left the water in the reservoir, it can generate electricity when it flows out.
Of course they could be referring to other sources of water flowing nearby, but I don't think there are any.
Someone doesn't seem to have thought this through very clearly. Or else we're all missing something very important. Just doesn't make sense. And I even read the article.
"In some cases, utilities in California actually pay other utility companies to take the excess electricity off their hands."
I don't really understand paying to get rid of surplus electricity. Isn't the point to sell electricity?
Also is there additional room for more generators? Or to update the existing ones? I would hope generator technolofy has advanced since 1961
Remember when people used to talk about how nuclear would bring about a future where power was "too cheap to meter"?
At night we buy practically free nuclear-generated electricity from France (canâ(TM)t turn the plant off at night and you have to do something with the electricity) and use it to pump water back up into the mountains. Then during the day we release it and generate electricity that we sell to Germany and France at high daytime prices.
Eventually we will build Dyson spheres to power our Sisyphus simulators.
Now I'm about to take you through a fully functional power plant, so please, no one wander off the dam tour and please take all the dam pictures you want. Now are there any dam questions?
Further to my comment, here's the reasoning I was getting at. If we take a certain amount of the downstream river's flow, call it f, and pump it back into the reservoir where it will be released at night, presumably increasing the flow by f (the overall flow in 24 hours is the same), then that's the same as simply reducing the dam's outflow by f during the day and increasing it by f at night. Same effect, but no pumping required. Am I incorrect in this analysis? This would be true for any pumped storage scheme on a flowing river system, such as the one proposed for Loch Nes. One might think the electricity used for pumping is being stored and released later, but this has to be an illusion because the water already had all that potential energy to begin with. The pumping energy is lost as far as I can tell.
The only scenario where pumped storage makes sense is pumping from a lower body of water to an upper body of water that's not normally part of a flowing river system.
Snowdonia did it first. Some major differences I know but I'm quite surprised that it's not already being used in a similar fashion as this.
If water levels continue to drop in Lake Mead, this may really put a strain on the river and everyone down stream.
And this plan depends on Hoover Dam continuing to have enough water to work at all. With those decreasing levels in Lake Mead, it may be necessary to pump just to keep the dam running at 20%.
And pumping the water has to be done in a manner that protects the wildlife using the river.
With all of that said, this "virtual battery" of energy storage beats real batteries by a longshot, IMO. Much cleaner, too.
It makes lots of sense and is already implemented in other places like the Grand Coulee Dam along the Columbia River. Excess electricity is used to pump water to a higher elevation when there is excess electricity available. When there is demand for stored electricity, the water is allowed to flow back to lower elevations, with electricity being produced by the dam generators. This is called pumped-storage hydroelectricity and converts between gravitational potential energy and electrical energy. I would be concerned about environmental impacts if enough water was pumped back behind the dam to have a significant effect on downstream flow. However, if the cycle is primarily diurnal, as I suspect is the case, it shouldn't be a problem.
Have these people seen Lake Mead lately? It's down so far it's two feet from the point where everyone its water (released through the dam) will have to face automatic cut-backs. There ISN'T any "extra water" to pump back up into the lake. Not even close. The lake's been drying out for years.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I assume they would pump the water from Lake Havasu, the reservoir behind Parker Dam. I thought Colorado water was entirely subscribed. So the question is whose water they plan to use.
Yes, this makes perfect sense in the right location. Mountains with the right geography, and of course building the dam flooded 100 square miles. So where you have just the right geography, and you don't mind destroying everything upstream for hundreds of square miles, at can make sense. Well, except consider Banqiao.
As Banqiao and other dams show, you also need to be okay with destroying everything downstream for many miles. Given all those conditions, it works well. Hoover dam is one of very few places in the US where it's a good fit.
Yes, you are incorrect in your analysis. Let's say you have hydroelectric power and wind turbines, which are both needed to satisfy peak demand during the day. However, at night, the wind turbines alone produce excess electricity. At night, you shut off flow downstream through the dam and use excess electricity to pump water upstream behind the dam and let it flow back down during the day. Some of the water therefore flows downstream through the dam multiple times, increasing the overall power output from the dam. Electricity from an external source like wind turbines would be the source of the extra gravitational potential energy. Ignoring spillways and downstream tributaries, all of the water below the dam must have flowed through the dam at some point. Pumping water upstream at night using energy from an external source increases the overall amount of water upstream during the day. The overall result is that when some of the water is pumped upstream at night, it ends up flowing through the dam multiple times. This means the dam produces more electricity than it otherwise would, at the expense of excess power from other sources.
@caselh
As others have pointed out the dam needs to spill water to maintain minimum stream flows even when the power it produces isn't needed. The idea would be to capture that water downstream below where it is needed for stream flows and pump it back into the reservoir. That said the further down stream, the more power is required to pump it back into the reservoir but most of that power is wasted since the water only produces power based on the drop from the reservoir to the river.
Suppose you have a gallon of milk. In fact, go grab one from the fridge right now since this is unclear to you. As you've already considered, you can release some potential energy by allowing the gallon of milk to fall - it's weight could power a generator. Let's call the amount of power "one milk-fall". That's our unit of measurement.
Now if you were to lift it back up again and then use it's fall to power the generator again, that wouldn't be generating more power, because you'd be USING energy to lift it, then recovering that energy. You could lift it ten times and let it fall ten times to get 10 milk-fall of power from the generator, but you'd have to use 10 milk-fall of power to lift it, so that would be a waste.
Now suppose *I* do the lifting for you, for free. I keep lifting it up, then you keep powering your generator with its weight, getting power from it. YOU could get 10 milk-fall of power out, I would be putting the power in.
Suppose I have a solar panel, which produces good power from 10AM-3PM on sunny, cloudless days. You need power in the evening, and when it's cloudy. I use my solar power to lift it at 2PM on a sunny day. You can then retrieve that power by letting it fall in the evening, while people are home with their lights on and they are cooking dinner. We've effectively shifted the benefit of solar power from around noon into the evening.
This makes sense at Hoover dam. There is 100 square miles already flooded which can be topped up by pumping water up around noon. The mountains are in place to hold the water where it needs to be. There isn't major city downstream that will be destroyed when the dam eventually fails, etc.
I deduce from the TFA's suggestion to use Elon Musk's batteries that the anonymous submitter is none other than yourself.
How do you plead?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When looking at something of this scale, you can't use today's prices. I found several estimates of the rate of decline of cost in battery storage over the next few years and even the conservative ones put it at 70% of today's prices in 5 years. Since pumped storage is a very mature technology, it is unlikely to experience any decline.
The 15 vs 26 cent comparison in the article amounts to pumped storage being roughly 60% of the cost of battery storage right now. So, in roughly 7 years, the two should cross. And that doesn't take into account the likelihood of big advancements in utility scale flow battery storage which is likely going to replace lithium because it is not an application that cares about density or weight of the battery system so much as cost.
The likelihood of a project of this magnitude gaining all of its approvals and being completed in 7 years is slim to none.
This is just an attempt to slip some more billions into the old-money major construction industry.
It would be better to build much smaller scale projects with batteries placed closer to demand points. They would start coming online much sooner and each year the new projects can adapt to the latest, most cost-effective technologies. If you spread that same $3 billion over 15 years of battery buildout, the cost of the ones you're building near the end will be much less than that 15 cent per kWH mark and balance out the cost of today's expenditures. In addition, you'll be providing service within the first year. Mega projects always get eaten up by increased costs due to delays. A battery approach actually ends up having a decreased cost with delays.
The thing is, this unused energy that would go to waste is quite some distance from the ocean.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
then let's just say up front this is all about the windmills, and discuss the pro and cons of having windmills.
A dam is a mature and well understood technology. We know it and have reason to trust it. We don't need to introduce some other technology to justify the existence of dams.
I'm suspicious of special pleading for windmills and solar. If they need dams to be worthwhile, but the dams don't need them to be worthwhile...
Then why are they saying to shut off the AC?
A whole lot of things in California don't add up. This is one of them.
If you're building storage ponds specifically for a pumped storage hydro station, you only need comparably tiny ponds, since you only need water for a few hours of operation, unlike a normal hydro power dam, where you may want water for months of operation.
Unlike the facilities visible here: https://www.google.com/search?q=pumped+storage+hydro+aerial&tbm=isch Hoover dam would need a storage pond at the bottom of the dam.
Pumped storage makes sense if the river does not have sufficient flow but the height difference is considerable. With pumps and a lower reservoir, you can reuse the same water several times.
However, pumped hydro is generally only worth building if you get to use the pumps at least once a day, you can't meaningfully use it to e.g. store energy from winter to summer (unlike regular hydro which often does that). Batteries will soon (as in within 10 years) be able to do intraday load-following cheaper that pumped storage. Hopefully the pumps will have paid themselves back before that happens.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The thing is, this unused energy that would go to waste is quite some distance from the ocean.
Well, in future we should build all crypto-mining rigs into plastic drink bottles so that when they go into the ocean they can use that for cooling thus solving both the problem of getting maximum speed and how to ensure that the heat gets delivered to boil the ocean.
One way to divide power systems is those that need to be reliable versus those that can be used whenever they happen to be available.
A few hours of storage is useful for "if we happen to have that's cool, if not we'll just use the natural gas plant". Large storm systems and other weather patterns can easily last several days, occasionally a week or more, so if you want to make weather-dependent power reliable, you need at least a week of storage.
Residential water use is under 15% of California's water supply - the rest is industry. If you want to do something about limited water, ban fracking, cattle ranching, almond & rice farming.
I'd say, that's one dam good idea!
Use the excess electrical capacity to either heat or cool thermal mass.
In summer, cool thermal mass in residences and businesses.
In winter, heat thermal mass in residences and businesses.
We just toured the Cruachan power station in Scotland that was built to specifically do exactly this and has been doing it since 1965. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station
Hoover Dam is on the border of Nevada along with Arizona. Same for Lake Mead behind the dam.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hoover+Dam/@36.0160655,-114.7377325,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x89d59d0bd29de37!8m2!3d36.0160655!4d-114.7377325
If wind and solar needs storage to provide power that is inexpensive, low carbon, and reliable, then we need storage that is inexpensive, reliable and low carbon. That means we need nuclear power, because fuel is storage and uranium is a low carbon fuel.
Here's a short (about 2 minutes) video explaining the problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Here's a longer (24 minute) video explaining the problem in more detail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We will see an expansion of the use of nuclear power because no president will allow the lights to go out in the country, and that applies to any country that has a president. The sooner we come to this realization and start building nuclear power the less stress this will have on the economy and the environment.
Whatever problems people have brought up against nuclear power they have always been problems of policy, not physics. We can change policy, we can't change the laws of physics.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The short answer is no.
The long answer is that a battery is a collection of chemical cells connected together to behave like a larger cell, so no, it cannot.
What's wrong with calling it energy storage? Isn't this supposed to be news for nerds, not oversimplifications for morons?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=30192
In the article referenced on /., California supposedly has so much power from renewables, it can't use it. But, according to the link, California IMPORTS A QUARTER OF ITS ELECTRICITY. (as of 2017)
so - who's mistaken....or lying?
Article is confusing. Maybe this, if my reasoning is correct , would clarify:
water -> downstream:
1) If there is too much water behind the dam, let it go down, by generating power if there is any market for it at the time, or just spill it. Unlikely there would be any need to pump water back up during a period of too much water behind the dam. (Any time I've looked at Lake Mead in recent years, I though it was about to dry up, so I wonder how often that happens.)
2) If the water itself is needed downstream for any reason, and essential future use is not impacted, nor significant market opportunity lost for a higher price within the near future to generate power when there is a good market for it. "Within near future" is presuming water downstream is not an instant emergency, then generate power at best time of day. Even spill more if generating power doesn't pay enough and more water downstream is urgent.
3) If significant future needs are taken into account, either for water needed or better market opportunity (including weather forecast), then generate power whenever optimum profit can be made.
pump water -> back behind dam:
1) If any excess water is below the dam, due to previous 3 reasons, and it is beyond what is immediately needed further downstream and considering most likely downstream needs could wait until after sun stops shining, or winds calm, and also electricity cost to pump it back is cheap enough compared to time shifted market opportunity, and also if Lake Mead is not too full anyway, sure, pump some back up.
Looks like that would take a fair amount of real time prognosticating, and so I can understand how a quick summary article might have trouble giving a full feel for the complexity of the cost vs benefit implications, and just appear confusing if abbreviated too much. Of course, newspapers have to contend with the public's limited attention span, so mostly only communicate the flavour of the situation, and rarely ever really explain anything....
Wonder how the number of projected windows of opportunity to pump water back upstream would compare in value to the cost of the upstream pumping installation.
Ot the argument against being a vegetarian since organic vegetables are more expensive than chik fil e
None of this occurs in a vacuum, and one can't win an argument by saying a new solution is going to be destructive, unless the current solution is 100% non destructive, which nothing is because entropy is real and there is no such thing as a free lunch.
So what we are saying here is that this is a solution that can provide the required 24x7 electrical flow, even when the sun is not shine or the wind is not blowing, without the costs associated with fossil fuels. Furthermore, unlike a traditional power plant, it is easy to regulate the power output to meet the demands of the moment and not have to run excess capacity and waste resources.
But of coursed the irrational reactive luddites who are afraid of change and are unable to learn the new skills needed for a new technological world just pretend that mountains are not already being destroyed, and the air is not already being polluted beyond what is healthy. I will remind people of one fact. Much of California is in a unique geological structure that prevent the polluted air from being diluted quickly with clean air. This means that they are unique in being intolerant to excess pollution. As the feds insist that California can no longer regulate it's pollutants we are going to see the air quality and health situation decrease dramatically.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I love it when you the light bulb goes on.
That should be:
I love it when the light bulb goes on.
I guess predictive text figured "I love ..." should be followed by "you".
I guess I love you too. :)
Crap, and I was going to suggest using the excess power for desalination.
This is California we're talking about. The excess power should be used to create Dry Ice, thereby trapping carbon dioxide and saving the world from Global Warming.
So I take it you're suggesting that we should build Hoover Dam style installations in California?
Which canyons do you have in mind to dam? The lake behind Hoover Dam, Lake Meade, is 247 square miles. You've suggested that's fine to go ahead and flood 247 square miles at various places in California. Cool, where? Which 247 square miles area upstream of a deep canyon would you suggest destroying?
Are you suggesting that killing a quarter million people is also an acceptable cost of building each power plant, or do you have some locations in mind that don't have any cities downstream, so we don't have another Banqiao?
It will cost more energy to pump that water back up there than will be gained letting it flow back down when needed. Sure solar and wind helps negate this impact, but that'd be assuming every pump along the route were powered by such. I'm seriously doubting that.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The politicians in California are so drunk on one-party-rule power (in this case, Democrats) that they are no longer even trying to hide the lies and contradictions. When there is political competition, the guys in power usually have to at least attempt to make their lies plausible.
California recently announced plans to ration water because there's not enough to go around and they are not competent to get more, but now we are supposed to believe they have enough to pump it backwards up into storage above the Hoover Dam? The new announced rationing rules which are to begin in several years would require every homeowner to allow all vegitation on his land to die (interesting impact on CO2 by the way) and require each citizen to decide whether to flush the toilet or take a shower or do laundry on any particular day (use more than 50 gallons a day and pay a $1000 fine).
California says it has a surplus of energy because of renewables, but has been telling its citizens there is an energy shortage and to avoid rolling blackouts they need to cut back on air conditioning. They also used the claims to adjust the payout to people with solar panels who sell their excess back to the grid. If there was indeed a surplus of electricity then California could use it to power desalination plants and solve the water shortage.
These clowns need to pick a single script and settle on it. Contradictory claims are too easily laughed at.
As does California, several, some of which it has had for a long time. For instance: The San Luis reservoir / O'Neil Forebay complex.
San Luis reservoir was completed in 1967 and has a capacity of just over 2 million acre-feet, about 319 feet above the forebay. The forebay is at the level of the local section of the California State Water and Central Valley Projects, while the reservoir is filled by pumping and generates power when water is released. It serves both as water storage for irrigation and city drinking, and as a pumped-water energy storage facility.
For decades many ares of the US had to go to expensive peaking generation and variable electric rates while California did not: The power requirements for pumping irrigation water are enormous, but the time of day of the pumping is not critical. So California electric utilities and the water projects just arranged for the pumping to be varied by time of day to level the load on the electric grid. But the wide deployment of air conditioning and solar and wind power seem to have disrupted that.
That last is somewhat surprising, actually, Solar + wind generation tends to level the daily peaking and HVAC requirements, including compensating for weather variations. (More sun = more air conditioning load and more solar generation. More wind = more HVAC load due to lowered effectiveness of insulation and more wind generation.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's not just cost. It's renewability. A pump station shouldn't use nearly so much in rare earth materials as a utility-scale battery.
Your ridiculous attempts at analysis are hurting my brain and reducing my faith in humanity. And THAT'S an accomplishment.
Forget day and night. It is just confusing you. Day or night does not matter at all. All that matters is excess power available compared to demand. Power companies have to figure out ways to match the power production to the power demand. They can't tell the populace when to use power except in very specific situations and ways. This and similar projects are ways of storing that power until it is demanded by the public.
Forget the notion that pumping water back into the reservoir is somehow water consumption. It is not. Simply put IT IS NOT CONSUMPTION. I'm not quite sure how someone's head could even conjure up the notion that it is. Hard drug use wouldn't even explain the ridiculous mistake.
What IS a factor is whether the water release from the dam would somehow impact the water available for actual water consumption. The article and interviews make this point clear. This would require a comparison of schedules. The schedule to make this project worth doing from the standpoint of energy storage vs the schedule of water release required to satisfy water use demand. That's likely the main concern that needs to be examined. I don't see simplistic basement analysis having the info available to produce anything useful in that regard.
Let's see, we raised your electric bill by 50% so that everyone would get solar. Now we have too much solar, so we will need to raise your electric bill to build stuff to store the extra solar. Kludge upon kludge.
Okay, by CA mandate they have created so much renewable energy that they have to pay others to take the excess. Keep that in mind and now how much money will the state have to pay daily to give away their excess stored energy? Just keep on mandating things and keep losing money, I guess that's why they have the $1000 fine for each plastic straw served in a restaurant!
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
California, with all it's major water shortages, won't go for pumping water BACK into Lake Mead and thus putting it's water in even shorter supply.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
As I understand it, the amount of water that is released from the dam is controlled, so why not just close the tap during off peak, so the water never actually leaves the dam? There is no way any kind of energy efficiency can be achieved by recycling the water through the dam.
In California the utility PG&E constructed the Helms Project in the Seirra Nevada Mountains for power generation during peak loads.
The video in the link shows the process quite clearly.
I've toured this powerhouse and while we were there San Francisco called and asked for more power, so we had 6 minutes to hustle down to the turbine shaft room.
Shortly after we got there the valve opened and the sound of rushing water from within the steel penstock was intense as it entered the top of the turbine and went from zero to top speed within seconds, it was quite impressive.
its standard use of water reservoirs with dams in western flatter countries.
its just about the most efficient way to store energy. provided that you have the water to pump!
but you need a ready source of water.
the efficiency as energy storage calcs are finnish high school physics maths(since like 80s).
so.. an idea as old as dams.
And when you factor in the loss through evaporation, (millions of acre-feet?) how does that change the economics?