4 ms·

I'm curious. If you have 60% hydro, you have a lot of water coming into the reservoirs from snow melt. Why would you bother with pumping up more water from belo

• reubenmorais 8y ago
  They might not be able to change production quickly enough in hydro plants to serve daily demand peaks, or the peaks might be higher than the total produced amount from the 60% hydro.
• Aromasin 8y ago
  There's rarely ever enough water coming from upstream to counter the huge amount of water that gets dumped during peak energy consumption hours. If you've got extra grid power left over that's not being used during trough hours and it's not used to refill the reservoir, or stored in some other way (lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen gas production etc.) it's just going to go to waste.
  • Arnt 8y ago
    I see. That doesn't apply to the present subject though; Idaho uses mostly snow, and for a reservoir that buffers most of a winter's snow, a day's peak/trough energy consumption is a rounding error.
  • kortilla 8y ago
    >There's rarely ever enough water coming from upstream Not the case in Idaho