6 ms·

Most current pumped hydro uses existing dams because duh. But nobody is building those anymore, for reasons you note. Existing hydro power dams were expensive b

by ncmncm 4y ago

Most current pumped hydro uses existing dams because duh. But nobody is building those anymore, for reasons you note. Existing hydro power dams were expensive because they needed to be deep to store years of water, and concrete because deep water has high pressure. They destroy ecosystems because that is where the water comes from. Dedicated pumped hydro storage is typically quite shallow, with an earthen dike (if needed at all), and the only place with high pressure is at the bottom end of a penstock. It does not need to store years of water; just a day's worth is useful.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
A day's worth puts it in the power limited regime where $100/kWh 4C batteries are already close to viable, and can use the 50x higher power per $ and higher efficiency for minute by minute arbitrage to offset costs. Do you have sources for real projects that can beat $60/kWh capacity and $600/kW power (what you'd be competing with by the time construction finished)? Moreover it also needs to beat hydrogen or methane storage (electricity->chemical-electricity) which (sans capex for tanks because I can't find good numbers, but I think it adds about 20%) is about $100/MWh out and $1000/kW using current technology including energy and projected to fall to somewhere around $40 and $500 in realistic timescales. To make it impossible to mine more fossil fuels even for a mixture of slave-driving sociopaths unrestrained by law and theocrats actively seeking apocalypse we need to be able to use a MWh at night in mid winter that was produced at 2pm in summer for less than around $40 and then do it another billion times without hitting some resource limit. Hydrogen with storage is shockingly close, and if synthetic ammonia/methane or metal hydride get over the line, noone will look at fossil fuels again. You seem to be telling me that pumped hydro is already there, but I can't find a decent source agreeing with you (or any numbers dealing with this use case for that matter).
- ncmncm 4y ago
  What I am saying about pumped hydro is that it is deeply mature technology, with no surprises in store. All the equipment is essentially unchanged for decades, except for control-system electronics. All that is new is reservoirs not fed by watersheds. There are actually dozens of shallow reservoirs behind earthen dams way high up in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, many almost a century old, constructed with bulldozers that used pulleys instead of hydraulics, hauled up there on fantastically bad cart-track roads. The reservoirs feed penstocks down to Pelton wheels thousands of feet below. For storage, they just attached pumps to the penstocks to push water back up.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > What I am saying about pumped hydro is that it is deeply mature technology, with no surprises in store. All the equipment is essentially unchanged for decades, except for control-system electronics. All that is new is reservoirs not fed by watersheds. And I can attach a washing machine motor to my water tank. If it produces basically nothing and costs double the alternative, it's not relevant to the discussion. > There are actually dozens of shallow reservoirs behind earthen dams way high up in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, many almost a century old, constructed with bulldozers that used pulleys instead of hydraulics, hauled up there on fantastically bad cart-track roads. The reservoirs feed penstocks down to Pelton wheels thousands of feet below. For storage, they just attached pumps to the penstocks to push water back up. So there are no new projects which not destroying an ecosystem that are on cost parity with batteries then? Also as an aside, how pathetic is capitalism as an organizational system that we can't achieve the types of things that were done with horses and carts and pulley bulldozers in the past?
Schroedingersat 4y ago
To follow up, fengning is on an existing river, uses an existing lower reservoir, has favorable geography, cost between $1.8 and $3 billion somewhere and stores 40GWh with 3.6 GW power. This makes it better than existing batteries for ~1 day time scales and roughly on par with the upcoming generation of things like sodium batteries. It's not a clear indicator as it's obviously optimized for power, but these all seem to be big advantages specific to the site which would indicate that an artificial reservoir would have trouble competing even against batteries. Different sources have figures that differ by a bit (presumably projections vs actual) and most seem to have some mistakes. Here's one. https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/fengning-pumped-storage-power-plant/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/fengning-pumped-st... I could believe that you might improve storage/cost by a factor of 10 if you found a suitable reservoir by reducing power, but that seems to back up my initial assertion that you need specific geography and to significantly change the ecosystem fairly well. As such it seems like it is not much better than a battery for displacing fracked methane, oil, or nuclear for mediating seasonal variability (which is what synthetic denser-than-hydrogen fuel is for as it is optimized for approximately zero cost per capacity at the expense of the highest cost per joule with competitive cost per watt). Plus batteries still have a 10-20% efficiency benefit.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Pumped hydro, batteries, and tanked chemicals are not the only storage media. We also have underground compressed air using existing deep cavities, and undersea compressed air. And underwater buoyancy, drawing floats down toward seafloor-mounted pulleys, using a winch and motor-generator on shore. Demand will not exceed our capacity to make cables and floats. But the real answer is that there is nowhere even close to as great a need for long-term storage as you imagine, just as there is not much petroleum stored today. Petroleum is extracted and delivered continuously and reliably. Myriad tropical solar farms will synthesize ammonia year-round, shipping anywhere needed on demand, so storage is needed only until the next shipment arrives. And HVDC transmission lines will move power from where it is being produced to where it is not, over 1000s of km, at a wholly tolerable loss rate. Much of this will move power eastward from afternoon production and westward from morning production, but also generally fill in for local production and storage shortfalls everywhere. So Finland can have ammonia shipped in continuously all winter long, just as they ship in petroleum and NG today. Transmission lines will compete for that business.

by ncmncm 4y ago

Schroedingersat 4y ago

A day's worth puts it in the power limited regime where $100/kWh 4C batteries are already close to viable, and can use the 50x higher power per $ and higher efficiency for minute by minute arbitrage to offset costs. Do you have sources for real projects that can beat $60/kWh capacity and $600/kW power (what you'd be competing with by the time construction finished)? Moreover it also needs to beat hydrogen or methane storage (electricity->chemical-electricity) which (sans capex for tanks because I can't find good numbers, but I think it adds about 20%) is about $100/MWh out and $1000/kW using current technology including energy and projected to fall to somewhere around $40 and $500 in realistic timescales. To make it impossible to mine more fossil fuels even for a mixture of slave-driving sociopaths unrestrained by law and theocrats actively seeking apocalypse we need to be able to use a MWh at night in mid winter that was produced at 2pm in summer for less than around $40 and then do it another billion times without hitting some resource limit. Hydrogen with storage is shockingly close, and if synthetic ammonia/methane or metal hydride get over the line, noone will look at fossil fuels again. You seem to be telling me that pumped hydro is already there, but I can't find a decent source agreeing with you (or any numbers dealing with this use case for that matter).

ncmncm 4y ago
What I am saying about pumped hydro is that it is deeply mature technology, with no surprises in store. All the equipment is essentially unchanged for decades, except for control-system electronics. All that is new is reservoirs not fed by watersheds. There are actually dozens of shallow reservoirs behind earthen dams way high up in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, many almost a century old, constructed with bulldozers that used pulleys instead of hydraulics, hauled up there on fantastically bad cart-track roads. The reservoirs feed penstocks down to Pelton wheels thousands of feet below. For storage, they just attached pumps to the penstocks to push water back up.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > What I am saying about pumped hydro is that it is deeply mature technology, with no surprises in store. All the equipment is essentially unchanged for decades, except for control-system electronics. All that is new is reservoirs not fed by watersheds. And I can attach a washing machine motor to my water tank. If it produces basically nothing and costs double the alternative, it's not relevant to the discussion. > There are actually dozens of shallow reservoirs behind earthen dams way high up in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, many almost a century old, constructed with bulldozers that used pulleys instead of hydraulics, hauled up there on fantastically bad cart-track roads. The reservoirs feed penstocks down to Pelton wheels thousands of feet below. For storage, they just attached pumps to the penstocks to push water back up. So there are no new projects which not destroying an ecosystem that are on cost parity with batteries then? Also as an aside, how pathetic is capitalism as an organizational system that we can't achieve the types of things that were done with horses and carts and pulley bulldozers in the past?

Schroedingersat 4y ago

To follow up, fengning is on an existing river, uses an existing lower reservoir, has favorable geography, cost between $1.8 and $3 billion somewhere and stores 40GWh with 3.6 GW power. This makes it better than existing batteries for ~1 day time scales and roughly on par with the upcoming generation of things like sodium batteries. It's not a clear indicator as it's obviously optimized for power, but these all seem to be big advantages specific to the site which would indicate that an artificial reservoir would have trouble competing even against batteries. Different sources have figures that differ by a bit (presumably projections vs actual) and most seem to have some mistakes. Here's one. https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/fengning-pumped-storage-power-plant/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/fengning-pumped-st... I could believe that you might improve storage/cost by a factor of 10 if you found a suitable reservoir by reducing power, but that seems to back up my initial assertion that you need specific geography and to significantly change the ecosystem fairly well. As such it seems like it is not much better than a battery for displacing fracked methane, oil, or nuclear for mediating seasonal variability (which is what synthetic denser-than-hydrogen fuel is for as it is optimized for approximately zero cost per capacity at the expense of the highest cost per joule with competitive cost per watt). Plus batteries still have a 10-20% efficiency benefit.

ncmncm 4y ago
Pumped hydro, batteries, and tanked chemicals are not the only storage media. We also have underground compressed air using existing deep cavities, and undersea compressed air. And underwater buoyancy, drawing floats down toward seafloor-mounted pulleys, using a winch and motor-generator on shore. Demand will not exceed our capacity to make cables and floats. But the real answer is that there is nowhere even close to as great a need for long-term storage as you imagine, just as there is not much petroleum stored today. Petroleum is extracted and delivered continuously and reliably. Myriad tropical solar farms will synthesize ammonia year-round, shipping anywhere needed on demand, so storage is needed only until the next shipment arrives. And HVDC transmission lines will move power from where it is being produced to where it is not, over 1000s of km, at a wholly tolerable loss rate. Much of this will move power eastward from afternoon production and westward from morning production, but also generally fill in for local production and storage shortfalls everywhere. So Finland can have ammonia shipped in continuously all winter long, just as they ship in petroleum and NG today. Transmission lines will compete for that business.