4 ms·

I would assume the water pump is more efficient than the motor moving the concrete though.

• anonymous5133 8y ago
  IMO, that is not an important factor because the water pump option would not even be available in a desert area. This is assuming you are thinking of traditional pumped-hydro. You could probably make some sort of closed off pumped-storage where water can't escape but that would probably be very expensive.
  • waynecochran 8y ago
    If you have driven thru the Columbia Gorge where the highest capacity hydroelectric dams are you’ll notice that these dams are much lower than the surrounding top of the gorge. I always wonder why not pump water to the top of the gorge?
    • mmt 8y ago
      I would expect a signficant limiting factor to be the cost of dam construction (which is going to go up at least geometrically with height, assuming a V-shaped opening), not the height of the already-constructed-by-nature surrounding walls.
  • URSpider94 8y ago
    Many of our biggest hydro facilities in the USA are smack in the middle of the desert.
• URSpider94 8y ago
  Nope. Pumped storage is between 70 and 80 percent efficient, this is 85 percent efficient. Remember, with pumped storage, the pumps/turbines are usually centrifugal vanes, not displacement pumps. So, there’s quite a bit of inefficiency caused by fluid drag and leakage/backflow, like in an automatic car transmission without a torque converter. With a crane, the motor is directly geared to the weight.