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If a hydroelectric power station produces 30 TWh per year, but demand including aluminum smelters is only 20 TWh, then there's 10 TWh excess. This is use-it-or

If a hydroelectric power station produces 30 TWh per year, but demand including aluminum smelters is only 20 TWh, then there's 10 TWh excess. This is use-it-or-lose-it. Should they just allow the river to flow and bypass the turbines?

mynameisvlad 9y ago
With massive regional grids like what's present in North America, it's not just as simple as that. Someone on the other side of the continent could use your 10TWh excess and curtail their own fossil fuel use instead.
JustAnotherPat 9y ago
No, they can store it in some Tesla batteries.
cbhl 9y ago
Hydroelectric is one of the oldest electrical storage systems there is -- you can store more electricity as gravitational energy by pumping the water back uphill, and then letting it flow back down during peak times. There's a reason why hydroelectric plants and dams go together.
- jacobush 9y ago
  ... that reason being that dams are used to collect the water from rainfall.
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  Very few dams have the capacity to pump water back uphill. And they don't need it, because power-generating dams are generally only built in places that provide lots of downstream flow naturally, like the U.S. Pacific Northwest, or in places where a reservoir is already desired for other reasons (typically drinking water, navigation, and/or flood control). Dams have the capacity to route downstream flow around some turbines to lower their generating capacity. It's not really accurate to think of that routed water as "wasted capacity," because that water would flow naturally even if the dam wasn't there.
mundo 9y ago
This is a vast oversimplification, which only sounds plausible if you pretend that energy production scales linearly with demand. In the real world, if there's a plant producing more than its consumers demand, the reason for the excess capacity is to accommodate spikes and future growth. If you come along and build a BTC mining rig next door, that "future growth" has arrived sooner than expected, forcing the utility to build new capacity years ahead of schedule (presuming it's feasible to build it at all), resulting in significant price increases, their refusal to sell you as much electricity as you want to buy, or both. The (amortized) cost of building out new supply is a major[0] part of the cost of electricity - this is why most big energy producers spend millions of dollars per year on energy efficiency incentives. Haven't you ever wondered why your power company will give you a $50 rebate on an EnergyStar dishwasher? Isn't it counter-intuitive that they would pay you to buy less energy, when they have excess? It's not because they're tree-huggers - it's because decreasing demand growth delays the day when they need to build a new plant to meet demand, which increases the profitability of the current plant enough to make those incentives cost-effective[1]. 0: I can't find a good estimate and it varies by fuel type, but I rememeber an environmental engineer at a former job telling me it was about half. Look up "Levelized Cost of Electricity" for more info. 1: If you're not convinced, instead of demanding more details, I urge you to just stop and ask whether the proposition "There is a lot of excess energy production lying around which BTC miners can soak up without impacting everyone else very much" really passes the sniff test.

mynameisvlad 9y ago

With massive regional grids like what's present in North America, it's not just as simple as that. Someone on the other side of the continent could use your 10TWh excess and curtail their own fossil fuel use instead.

JustAnotherPat 9y ago

No, they can store it in some Tesla batteries.

cbhl 9y ago

Hydroelectric is one of the oldest electrical storage systems there is -- you can store more electricity as gravitational energy by pumping the water back uphill, and then letting it flow back down during peak times. There's a reason why hydroelectric plants and dams go together.

jacobush 9y ago
... that reason being that dams are used to collect the water from rainfall.
snowwrestler 9y ago
Very few dams have the capacity to pump water back uphill. And they don't need it, because power-generating dams are generally only built in places that provide lots of downstream flow naturally, like the U.S. Pacific Northwest, or in places where a reservoir is already desired for other reasons (typically drinking water, navigation, and/or flood control). Dams have the capacity to route downstream flow around some turbines to lower their generating capacity. It's not really accurate to think of that routed water as "wasted capacity," because that water would flow naturally even if the dam wasn't there.

mundo 9y ago

This is a vast oversimplification, which only sounds plausible if you pretend that energy production scales linearly with demand. In the real world, if there's a plant producing more than its consumers demand, the reason for the excess capacity is to accommodate spikes and future growth. If you come along and build a BTC mining rig next door, that "future growth" has arrived sooner than expected, forcing the utility to build new capacity years ahead of schedule (presuming it's feasible to build it at all), resulting in significant price increases, their refusal to sell you as much electricity as you want to buy, or both. The (amortized) cost of building out new supply is a major[0] part of the cost of electricity - this is why most big energy producers spend millions of dollars per year on energy efficiency incentives. Haven't you ever wondered why your power company will give you a $50 rebate on an EnergyStar dishwasher? Isn't it counter-intuitive that they would pay you to buy less energy, when they have excess? It's not because they're tree-huggers - it's because decreasing demand growth delays the day when they need to build a new plant to meet demand, which increases the profitability of the current plant enough to make those incentives cost-effective[1]. 0: I can't find a good estimate and it varies by fuel type, but I rememeber an environmental engineer at a former job telling me it was about half. Look up "Levelized Cost of Electricity" for more info. 1: If you're not convinced, instead of demanding more details, I urge you to just stop and ask whether the proposition "There is a lot of excess energy production lying around which BTC miners can soak up without impacting everyone else very much" really passes the sniff test.