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So, can we build enough hydro to make a difference and how much will it cost to beef up the grid to handle all the power going into and out of pumped hydro?

by nordify 11y ago

Retric 11y ago
Depends on what you want to do, but overall not much. Standard lines hung on towers run from $1 million to $4 million a mile, depending on terrain and other factors. Though, we already have an electric grid and you can do a lot by simply shifting where each area's supply is coming from. AKA town A get's power from town B's power plant town B, get's power from town C's power plant etc. Also, a lot of this infrastructure is a ~20+ year problem. So, a 50 billion dollar bill spread over 20 years spread over the entire US is ~8.50$ per year per person.
- nordify 11y ago
  I want to replace peaker plants with storage. Somehow I don't think the economics work out. Do you disagree? Even if we rebuild the whole continental US power grid (that's a lot more than $50 billion) to cope with the demands of using storage, it is unclear to me if we can build enough hydro to replace peaker plants. Apparently all other storage technologies other than hydro are cost-ineffective and/or do not have enough scale to solve the problem. Do you know if there is enough geography to go around for all the hydro we need or if there really are any cost-efficient alternatives?
  - Retric 11y ago
    You don't need to replace the grid, just add more capacity. The economics for ~100% up-time only work out when utility's are regulated to act that way. That means spare capacity and backups for your backups. As such I feel a few Peaker plants are actually a good idea. They should not be turned on every day and should be able to pick up the stack when unexpected things happen. In terms of hydro, we can build them to store ~12 hours worth of US electricity demand. Past that the geography still works just fine, but excess production becomes cheaper than excess storage. PS: Don't forget we already use pumped hydro. It's just a maximization problem where cost of excess capacity vs. extra storage.

So, can we build enough hydro to make a difference and how much will it cost to beef up the grid to handle all the power going into and out of pumped hydro?

by nordify 11y ago

So, can we build enough hydro to make a difference and how much will it cost to beef up the grid to handle all the power going into and out of pumped hydro?

Retric 11y ago

Depends on what you want to do, but overall not much. Standard lines hung on towers run from $1 million to $4 million a mile, depending on terrain and other factors. Though, we already have an electric grid and you can do a lot by simply shifting where each area's supply is coming from. AKA town A get's power from town B's power plant town B, get's power from town C's power plant etc. Also, a lot of this infrastructure is a ~20+ year problem. So, a 50 billion dollar bill spread over 20 years spread over the entire US is ~8.50$ per year per person.

nordify 11y ago
I want to replace peaker plants with storage. Somehow I don't think the economics work out. Do you disagree? Even if we rebuild the whole continental US power grid (that's a lot more than $50 billion) to cope with the demands of using storage, it is unclear to me if we can build enough hydro to replace peaker plants. Apparently all other storage technologies other than hydro are cost-ineffective and/or do not have enough scale to solve the problem. Do you know if there is enough geography to go around for all the hydro we need or if there really are any cost-efficient alternatives?
- Retric 11y ago
  You don't need to replace the grid, just add more capacity. The economics for ~100% up-time only work out when utility's are regulated to act that way. That means spare capacity and backups for your backups. As such I feel a few Peaker plants are actually a good idea. They should not be turned on every day and should be able to pick up the stack when unexpected things happen. In terms of hydro, we can build them to store ~12 hours worth of US electricity demand. Past that the geography still works just fine, but excess production becomes cheaper than excess storage. PS: Don't forget we already use pumped hydro. It's just a maximization problem where cost of excess capacity vs. extra storage.