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No -- hydro is like solar, _if we had unfathomably large, incredibly cheap, low-leakage batteries_. The US southwest is generating hydro power using water it
by bpodgursky 10y ago
No -- hydro is like solar, _if we had unfathomably large, incredibly cheap, low-leakage batteries_.
The US southwest is generating hydro power using water it saved up from 30 years ago, behind the hoover and glen canyon dams. That is MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE past what we can do with solar.
Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that.
- Arnt 10y agoOr I can come back to you when technology allows timeshifting usage to match availability. Even if you want to run a factory 24×7, you don't have to run the most power-hungry parts at an invariant pace, see?
- bpodgursky 10y ago? Except you're talking about _seasonal_ differences in sunlight availability. I'm really glad I'll be able to run my power-hungry electronics like a refrigerator during peak production times, like during the spring! We'll just have to make sure that people go to the hospital during probably-non-uninterruptible power windows. Sorry, but you're dealing with human beings and actual society, not a car factory. Leave me out of your plans.
- syncsynchalt 10y agoIndustrial consumes 1/3 of US electricity. This is about the same amount as residential use. This isn't about your fridge.
- DennisP 10y agoLet your factory sit partly idle sometimes and you increase the capital cost per unit of production. If wind/solar depends on this sort of thing, then basically it's imposing an externality on factories, and we should account for that as part of their cost. I'm all for preventing global warming, I just want to do it in the way that's most cost-effective for society as a whole, and that probably means including nuclear as part of the solution so we don't have to shut down factories when the wind doesn't blow at night.
- jdmichal 10y ago> Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that. Define "battery". Pumped-storage hydro is literally hydro as a "battery". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... Also completely ignoring the fact that every joule provided by solar is one less joule that hydro needs to provide, which in turn extends their stored energy life.
- bpodgursky 10y ago... Pumped-storage hydro is pumping water behind a dam. You can TRY to hollow out the top of a mountain and put the water there (yeah, that's also suuuuuuper environmentally friendly), but it's incredibly difficult to do it at reasonable scale, and when it fails it wipes out towns. You'll find the only reasonable way to store enough water to make a difference it is to put it in a valley, where the terrain helps you. And in the end, you've just rube-goldberged your way to hydro power; to actually get scale, it has very comparable environmental impact to hydropower because it ends up being almost the same thing.
- duaneb 10y agoYou don't necessarily need water: http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/ http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/