5 ms·
Some countries store energy by pumping water up a dam. Seems efficient.
by amenghra 11y ago
Some countries store energy by pumping water up a dam. Seems efficient.
- coryfklein 11y agoWhoa! That sounds really cool so I looked it up. It's called "Pumped-storage hydroelectricity" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
- inovica 11y agoVery. One of the first was in Scotland. Great to visit as you drive into the mountain and I think one of the Bond files had a scene filmed in it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station
- Analemma_ 11y agoIt's very efficient and it's a great solution overall; the only problem is there are only so many dams we can build, since each one requires drowning a valley.
- jhallenworld 11y agoSolution: swimming pool on the roof. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672202/you-deserve-a-house-with-a-pool-on-the-roof http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672202/you-deserve-a-house-with...
- richdougherty 10y agoThe more sun, the more water in the pool. Win-win!
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoSeriously though has anyone crunched the numbers on rainwater storage for microgeneration in a domestic setting. Could I efficiently use excess solar to pump water in to a house roof storage area and generate electric from that?
- jhallenworld 10y agoThe Tesla Powerwall has 6.5 kwh = 23.4 M joules. Gravity potential energy = mgh. Suppose pool is 10 meters up, then you need 239,000 kg of water = 63K gallons or 8400 cu ft. This is a huge pool: 29 ft. x 29 ft x 10 ft. You could use the city water supply: borrow water through a turbine at night, and return it during the day :-) Or have pool up very high, for example on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean: http://inhabitat.com/crazy-home-carved-into-a-coastal-cliff-has-a-swimming-pool-roof/ http://inhabitat.com/crazy-home-carved-into-a-coastal-cliff-...
- cninja 10y agoThey crunch the numbers here: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-stor... The energy in one gallon of gasoline is equivalent to the potential energy stored in 13 tons of water one kilometer up
- mikereedell 11y agoI grew up by one of these in NJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yards_Creek_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yards_Creek_Generating_Station I remember parking at the lower reservoir and hiking to the upper one and being amazed at how big the water pipe is.
- ori_b 10y agoFlywheels are another option: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
- cjensen 10y agoPumped storage is routinely used to store energy. It's not theoretical. Has Flywheel storage every been seriously used in large-scale commercial applications? Someone mentions it on every energy-storage thread, and I'd like to know if the people suggesting it are just spinning our wheels.
- cplease 10y agoIt's not even remotely on the same scale. There are three massive utility-level flywheel deployments according to Wikipedia that provide 15 minutes of output. Edit: Seems the purpose is purely frequency regulation, rather than storage per se.
- fanf2 10y agoThe JET fusion reactor in Oxfordshire uses flywheels to provide very large pulses of electricity for short periods of time (a minute or two iirc). The reactor requires too much energy to run directly off the National Grid.
- runholm 10y agoSounds like they use it for high output rather than efficiency though. Still interesting that it has real world applications though. Shows that the technology has potential as well.
- zeristor 10y agoAs I recall from a tour I went on of jet 30 years ago there are a large bank of flywheels which spin up over several minutes, these are then rapidly discharged to a bank of capacitors which are then used to power the experiment, I believe the duty cycle was 9 minutes. [1][2] I believe some electric cars used capacitors to store regenerated electricity from breaking. "More Ampères please Mister Woodbine." - Road to Welville [1] - http://pia.sagepub.com/content/200/2/95.abstract http://pia.sagepub.com/content/200/2/95.abstract [2] - http://www.euro-fusionscipub.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/JETC94082.pdf http://www.euro-fusionscipub.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/...
- hinkley 10y agoI thought I read that some water districts run their pumps at reduced volume during peak hours and top them off before or after. It's a smaller volume but it's already a solved problem. And it allows you to push some levers and dials as to whether it's cheaper this year to increase your water capacity or your power capacity. City planners love that kind of thing.
- taneq 10y agoWorks great if you have the right geography.
- dTal 10y agoBetter than nothing, but not that efficient. I took the tour of the somewhat mis-named Dinorwig Power Station (really a pumped storage facility) in Snowdonia, Wales. The figures they quoted there put it at about 75% efficiency. It's not really supposed to be for 24-hour power smoothing, more for rapid response to sudden demand; it's a lot faster to open a valve on a turbine than to stoke up a coal plant, and for some spikes (such as the example they quoted on the tour, when everyone puts the kettle on when Coronation Street finishes) you have a 30-second window or so. However, as demand has increased it's being used more and more, and the more it's used the more power we're wasting. Interestingly, it does not use a dam. There's a natural lake at the bottom of a mountain and a man-made reservoir at the top, and the entire pumping facility is completely inside the mountain; it's not at all obvious that there's anything there at all from the outside. I think about that whenever people moan about the environmental impact, or flooding valleys.