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Hydropower isn't easy, either. The stored water is often used for agriculture, and you have to manage flow rates to keep levies and river systems healthy. My

Hydropower isn't easy, either. The stored water is often used for agriculture, and you have to manage flow rates to keep levies and river systems healthy. My intuition is that the power and agricultural water demand roughly match up, both high in the summer. For levies and fish, you can't just dump or cut off water quickly. Ramping flow up creates turbidity that can harm fish. Cutting it off leaves saturated levies without support and leads to sloughing and failure. I don't know whether these limits would actually matter for an energy management scenario, just pointing out that there are certainly some limits.

Retric 9y ago
The specifics very much depend on the specific area. The northwest US for example has an abundance of water. The southwest on the other hand has to manage water of multiple years and has far less slack in the system. As to flow rates, that's a issue for sudden changes in output over minutes not seasonal shifts in demand. An average flow rate of +/- 10% for a month is a non issue for river ecosystems as long as it's within normal variation, but can represent a lot of stored energy over that month.