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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."
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.
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.
"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?
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"?
Build a second dam.
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.
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?
They got the cost right, but it's a cost for capacity not a cost added on to each KWh delivered.
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.
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.
if they've got all this excess energy they could desalinate pacific ocean water and pump it to lake mead.
Scott
According to TFA the pumping station will be 20 miles down river. If the water is traveling at say 5 MPH they have 4 hours from passing through the dam to reaching the pumping station and being recycled.
Effectively the river is used as a kind of delay line storage. Pretty cool.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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.
The problem is... where's the lower reservoir? The Colorado River isn't going to run backwards for you.
Also:
I assume they mean 2,6 and 1,5 cents, respectively.
Exactly. The Hoover Dam is a national monument, and this idea is monumentally stupid. Large dams like the Hoover constantly let water through because it is required to keep the river flowing. So you would need to let more water flow through to keep the river flowing.
Even if it made sense you'd have to carve out a large lower reservoir near the base of the dam. That fact the "Cleantechnica' didn't even mention this is a testament to their prowess at energy solutions.
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.
The only thing that seems to make sense to me - without destroying more landscape - is if they cut Lake Meade in half with a second dam, and had both a "high lake" and a "low lake". Of course, that would mean that the water behind Hoover Dam would generally be at rather low levels, and the water further upstream generally at high levels. Not sure how that would affect recreation. Might slightly increase evaporation / ground losses, too.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
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.
There's an excess of energy according to TFS and TFA. So what exactly are we wasting here?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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."
Wind and solar are not cheaper than nuclear in most places, and certainly not by and order of magnitude.
I would like to know where you get your facts from?
Build a second dam.
It's dams . . .
. . . all the way down.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If I pump it up twice as far it costs twice as much energy to pump it up, but I get twice as much when it comes tumbling back down.
Is there something I missed here, something that doesn't scale linearly?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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?
Why can’t existing nuclear plants make money in today’s electricity markets? Hint: it has nothing to do with cost of nuclear electricity.
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.
Is there something I missed here?
Yes. The power generation uses the potential difference between the level of Lake Mead, and the level of the outlet. If it then flows downhill for an additional 20 miles, no power is generated from that.
Large dams like the Hoover constantly let water through
No. Water flows only during periods of peak power demand.
There's an excess of energy according to TFS and TFA. So what exactly are we wasting here?
What's wasted is the capacity to use that energy later, when it's needed.
Los Angeles has a chronic problem of a shortage of power production in the summer, when the sun is high and winds are low. They might have an excess of power in the morning with all that solar power but unless people want to cool their houses and buildings to freezing and then still have them get unbearably hot in the afternoon this will continue to be a problem.
Here's what I propose as an alternate solution, and I accept that this may be unfeasible. I propose California build desalination plants along the shore to use that excess power. This will address their water shortages as well. The energy storage aspect comes in pumping desalinated water to the Hoover Dam, this addresses a water shortage problem downstream of the Hoover Dam. While they are at it maybe they can dump some of that water in the Rio Grande. So much water is taken from the Rio Grande that there are times the river no longer reaches the ocean, or the flow reverses and salt water invades the ecosystem. There's already a tunnel connecting the Colorado river to the Rio Grande but I do not know how much water can and does flow through it.
There's my proposal, don't build a pipe from a downstream location and pump water up to Lake Mead to get electricity storage for LA. Have LA pump the energy to the lake in the form of desalinated water. LA gets water, those downstream of the Hoover Dam get water, and LA still gets the electricity storage they need.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No need to carve out a lower reservoir, it already exists in the form of Lake Mohave that is formed by Davis Dam. Davis Dam is about 40 miles downstream from my estimating on Google Maps, and looks to maintain its water level pretty much at the level of Hoover Dam's base. Below Davis Dam is Parker Dam which forms Lake Havasu.
As for letting more water through, all of the discharge from Hoover Dam currently goes through its powerhouses at a fraction of their peak capacity. This plan would use excess power to pump water back up the hill specifically so that water could be flowed through the powerhouses when power demand is high.
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.
Except wind and solar are orders of magnitude cheaper and easier in every way than nuclear, but other than that yeah you're right.
Orders of magnitude? Citation needed. Here's mine:
https://www.instituteforenergy...
On shore wind, nuclear, and coal are all about the same cost, within the error bars of each other. Solar is expensive, and needs storage to follow load, making it cost even more. Wind also needs storage but if coupled with natural gas (the cheapest means we have to produce electricity right now), coal, and nuclear then it's a viable energy source. Assuming the goal is reducing CO2 then we'll rule out coal, leaving nuclear (a tiny fraction of CO2 compared to coal) and natural gas (about half the CO2 of coal), as backup for the wind. But, as the article points out, the problem with wind is the lack of storage. Here's the solution...
Fuel is storage.
With a mix of wind, nuclear, and natural gas we can get energy that is inexpensive, low CO2, and reliable. This means that states like California would have to start building new nuclear power plants and natural gas burning power plants to go along with the wind power. Sure, California is a sunny place so maybe they have locations where solar is as cheap as the rest so go with it if it makes sense.
The problem is storage and California has been destroying their storage capacity with the shutting down of coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. Stop doing that and the problem disappears.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Large dams like the Hoover constantly let water through
No. Water flows only during periods of peak power demand.
https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region...
If I pump it up twice as far it costs twice as much energy to pump it up, but I get twice as much when it comes tumbling back down.
Is there something I missed here, something that doesn't scale linearly?
You only get energy from the drop of water through the dam. The potential energy of the next 20 miles is lost. However, you bring up a good point in that if you are going to go through the cost of pumping water 20 miles upstream through a pipeline, it would make more sense to have reversible pump/turbines at the lower reservoir and then get more of that potential energy back.
Just did some checks with a clickable elevation map
Nominal elevation of Lake Meade: 372m
River at the base: ~223m (hard to tell)
Nominal elevation of Lake Mohave: 198m.
So looks like you lose about 25m between the dam and Lake Mojave.
If Lake Meade were relatively full, 25m losses wouldn't be that great. They become more significant the lower the dam height, of course.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
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.
There are two reservoirs downstream from Lake Mead.
Lake Mojave and Lake Havasu.
There's an excess of energy according to TFS and TFA. So what exactly are we wasting here?
What's wasted is the capacity to use that energy later, when it's needed.
Not really, the bitcoins can be used to buy someone else's excess when you are in need. :-)
I've toured Davis Dam (before they discontinued the tours). One item I found interesting was that the dam wasn't running at 100% of electricity capacity. They used it to handle peaks is what we were told.
It would be interesting to understand how much power both Hoover, Davis and Parker dams produce and whether or not they're running at capacity.
I'm wondering if the dams are running at 100% at peak times or not.
Pretty stupid. 20 miles down river means it is at an even lower elevation, meaning you have to pump water even further vertically with that much more efficiency loss. A typical pumped hydro has a reservoir at the base of the hydro outlet for a very good reason.
The only relevant things here is the cost of building the return pipe system, and the amount of extra electricity at high value times they can get out of it, and thus the levelized cost of that electricity. That only part of the electricity (that otherwise would have been 100% wasted) is recovered is irrelevant.
More power could be recovered if a second dam was built, to create a second lake with a level just below the Hoover Dam outlets. But whether this additional power produced would be worth the cost of building this dam, and the hassle of getting approval for a second lake, is questionable.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The elevation of the lowest Hoover Dam outlet is 272 meters, well above the river level, and the lowest Lake Mead elevation that produces electricity is 320 m. You get your biggest energy return if you pump the water up when Lake Mead is high. In that case you are raising it 174 m, and then getting 100 m of water drop back out. If it is at low water level you are raising it 122 m for a 48 m drop. So a 57% return (neglecting other losses) versus a 39% return.
You could raise the level of Lake Mojave, or build another dam farther upstream to increase the return. But you'd have to look at the additional costs vs benefits. But remember all of this is "free" electricity, it would be 100% wasted without this storage pump system.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I noticed no citations in your post.
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.'"
Los Angeles has a chronic problem of a shortage of power production in the summer, when the sun is high and winds are low. They might have an excess of power in the morning with all that solar power but unless people want to cool their houses and buildings to freezing and then still have them get unbearably hot in the afternoon this will continue to be a problem.
Wrong again. Has the radiation you love so much cooked your tiny little brain? All you do is you orient the solar panels such that they produce the most power when the power is needed most. Problem solved with solar and with no need for nuclear, once again.
I propose California build desalination plants along the shore to use that excess power.
Not cost effective, just like nuclear power.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Or you could make the pipe filling the Hoover Dam work both ways, pump up and generator down.
All you do is you orient the solar panels such that they produce the most power when the power is needed most. Problem solved with solar and with no need for nuclear, once again.
Citation needed.
I've seen the data and power is needed most shortly before sunset, when orienting your solar panels does nothing. Unless you are "orienting" your panels about 1000 miles off shore it's not helpful.
Not cost effective, just like nuclear power.
Citation needed.
I see that California has several desalination plants already, with plans for many more. I admit that pumping the water to another state could be more trouble than it's worth but building desalination plants is worth the trouble otherwise they would not be building them now, and if they build up reservoirs for the fresh water (which I'm sure that they already have) then they should be able to "tank up" fresh water when energy is cheap and stop desalination when it's expensive.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Nifty. Completed in 1976, delivers 110,000 acre-feet per year. Could be double that, but the Navajo grabbed half. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan-Chama_Project
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Desalination is a great direct use of fluctuating renewable power, because given the buffering effect of reservoirs there is no need to produce it at a constant rate. But desal water is better used right on the ocean, where most of California's people live. Greater Los Angeles alone is fourteen million people: pipe the renewable power to a giant desalination plant that serves the city.
If this were to be done, the Colorado water now headed to Los Angeles could now be retained in Lake Mead and/or sold to other downstream users. No need for infrastructure to send Pacific-derived water to the dam.
Pretty stupid. 20 miles down river means it is at an even lower elevation, meaning you have to pump water even further vertically with that much more efficiency loss. A typical pumped hydro has a reservoir at the base of the hydro outlet for a very good reason.
The only relevant things here is the cost of building the return pipe system, and the amount of extra electricity at high value times they can get out of it, and thus the levelized cost of that electricity. That only part of the electricity (that otherwise would have been 100% wasted) is recovered is irrelevant.
More power could be recovered if a second dam was built, to create a second lake with a level just below the Hoover Dam outlets. But whether this additional power produced would be worth the cost of building this dam, and the hassle of getting approval for a second lake, is questionable.
What electricity would be 100% wasted, and why don't you think efficiency matters what it comes to cost?
The problem is... where's the lower reservoir? The Colorado River isn't going to run backwards for you.
The whole lower Colorado below Hoover Dam is a stairstep of lakes behind smaller dams. The idea in TFA was to use the lakes behind Parker and Davis as the lower reservoirs to implement pumped storage behind Hoover. I maintain this would not be necessary if we used the fluctuating energy to desalinate on the Pacific coast, serving local cities.
Every drop of Colorado River water is allocated to downstream users, with the last muddy trickle being used by Mexico. Since the partition treaties and dam construction, none of it reaches the sea. Any water no longer needed by Los Angeles and San Diego would be purchased by other users under the same set of treaties.
Pumped hydro is not a new cool thing. eg Pumped-storage hydroelectricity 1930's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I've got a Chevy Citation that I'm going to use to run your stupid face over with. Go to wikipedo if you want.
I did go to Wikipedia, that's how I found the citation I gave in my previous post. I'm curious how you came to believe nuclear to be orders of magnitude more expensive than wind and solar. I must have missed what you saw on Wikipedia. Help me out and point to where you found what you believe you found.
You really are a useless cunt aren't you.
That may also be true, but I'd like a citation on that as well.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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
No, but we do use natural gas, oil, and coal generators to provide base and peak loads on the grid. The idea is to use unreliable sources to charge reliable dams so we can reduce or eliminate reliable carbon based sources.
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. :)
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.
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
Iâ(TM)m missing something... the river is constantly flowing right? So rather than pump water back, just donâ(TM)t let water through in the first place. Unless of course youâ(TM)re talking about shutting off the river completely and running it backwards, in which case, where is the water coming from? A big pipe from the next lake? Any environmental problems with letting the river bed go dry?
The chart doesn't really apply. It apparently tracks flow based on some sort of average, and is scaled by years, not hours. It says nothing at all about whether the flow is stopped for a few hours; the resolution isn't nearly sufficient.
I read the thread and was mildly amused - so it seems you may have a use, after all.
The chart doesn't really apply. It apparently tracks flow based on some sort of average, and is scaled by years, not hours. It says nothing at all about whether the flow is stopped for a few hours; the resolution isn't nearly sufficient.
https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region...
Seriously though, remember that not all crypto uses mining/proof-of-work. Some use proof-of-stake (terrible idea, IMO: âoehe who has the gold makes the rulesâ) and others use dustributed consensus among competing validators that are unlikely to collude. The latter do thousands of transactions per second on-chain, have negligible transaction fees, and donâ(TM)t needlessly burn energy like crappy old-tech BTC
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.
We know it costs less right now, but that ignores a few issues:
- Wind (and solar) don't tend to have the costs of backup or storage attributed. At the moment, the get to free ride on the back of dispatchable sources which pick up the slack when they don't do so well.
One of the big problems with wind and solar (and I love both, especially solar) is that they don't just vary on a day to day to day basis, but also vary quite predictably by time of year. For example, in the UK, wind generated 5.3 TWh in January but only 1.8TWh in June. So, unless the usage follows the same variation as the natural variation in generation, this will require dispatchable sources to be idle until required, or large amounts of storage.
Again, the chart is a daily average, with no indication of whether or not it was shut off during the day.
I would be somewhat surprised if they actually did cut the flow, but I've found no hard evidence either way.
[BTW, I've taken the inside tour of the dam, and would heartily recommend it to one and all.]
Again, the chart is a daily average, with no indication of whether or not it was shut off during the day.
I would be somewhat surprised if they actually did cut the flow, but I've found no hard evidence either way.
[BTW, I've taken the inside tour of the dam, and would heartily recommend it to one and all.]
I agree, but its the only thing I can find. I find no where any reference to cutting flow entirely under normal operation. That's not something that would go unnoticed. Can't prove a negative with no explicit statement though. It defies what I know about most dams and ecological controls, and its is hard to imagine letting the upper section of the river go dry on a regular basis. This is interesting;
"Water is released from Lake Mead only to meet downstream municipal and agricultural demands. Consequently, power demands in California, Arizona and Nevada do not impact its elevation."
https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn...
That seems to imply that average release amounts are determined more by downstream need that power demand. Not entirely what I would have expected.
It defies what I know about most dams and ecological controls, and its is hard to imagine letting the upper section of the river go dry on a regular basis.
Agreed.
This is interesting;
"Water is released from Lake Mead only to meet downstream municipal and agricultural demands. Consequently, power demands in California, Arizona and Nevada do not impact its elevation."
https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn...
That seems to imply that average release amounts are determined more by downstream need that power demand. Not entirely what I would have expected.
Interesting indeed, and I don't recall them talking about that during the tour, which seemed to focus more on the power generating aspects. Or maybe that's just what caught my interest. Anyway, thanks for the link.
I assume that if you are pumping water into the reservoir the first thing you're going to do is stop draining said reservoir, or at least turn it down to some minimum amount if you can't completely shut it off for some reason. This of course will stop the flow. If you put your pump at the base of the dam you'll quickly run out of water to pump back into the reservoir. If you put it 20 miles downstream, and assuming the water flows at 5 MPH, you can now pump for 4 hours before you run out of water to pump back into the dam.
If they wanted to, they could go all the way to Lake Mohave which would allow them to run the pumps for a very long time. But that would be about 60 miles or so. I'm sure they did some analysis and decided that 20 miles would give them a long enough time, most of the time.