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After living with nuclear naysayers for decades (and rolling my eyes at them), I hate to be a nuclear naysayer myself; but there's been some use of "pumped hydr
by clock_tower 11y ago
After living with nuclear naysayers for decades (and rolling my eyes at them), I hate to be a nuclear naysayer myself; but there's been some use of "pumped hydro" for storing electricity generated by solar power.
The principle is simple: build a hydroelectric dam and run it in reverse. Of course, this can't be done everywhere; you need a lot of peak solar production, a lot of water, and an easily-dammed valley, and you don't often see all three together... But it does get used to store power, and solar plus pumped hydro represent a kinda-sorta alternative to nuclear.
- rndmind 11y agoThe concept of a storing energy this way is fascinating.
- _nedR 11y agoHow efficient would that be though?
- binarypaean 11y agoRound-trip energy efficiency is reported to be > 80% for pumped-hydro energy storage. Ecological, space, and financial efficiency are more variable. http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technologies/pumped-hydroelectric-storage http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technologies/pumped-...
- danjayh 11y agoProblem is, many of the anti-combustion folks are also anti-dam, because of the habitat the reservoir destroys.
- clock_tower 11y agoThey're also anti-nuke. I've even heard people who are anti-wind (the watchword is "birdchoppers") and anti-solar (since solar panels wreck desert ecologies)... Let's just say it's a good thing they aren't responsible for development.