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True, yes. It just seems to me like conventional battery farms are not going to make much sense in a lot of places, and hydro pumped storage will. Another user

True, yes. It just seems to me like conventional battery farms are not going to make much sense in a lot of places, and hydro pumped storage will. Another user pointed out that the size inefficiency is severe enough with hydro pumped storage that it is less grid scale suitable than I thought, so that difference between hydro pumped storage and conventional battery farms is less than I thought. Regardless, energy storage is a huge problem that’s going to require lots of deference to practicality and as many simple solutions as possible. Frankly I’m not sure it is possible, which is why I’m a big advocate for nuclear.

moloch-hai 4y ago
Building out enough storage will be a huge task. We can't use much of it yet because we haven't the renewable generating capacity to charge it from. (Charging it from fossil fuels would be beyond stupid.) Several varieties are getting cheaper very fast, and new, cheaper ones are being invented, so when the time comes it will cost a lot less. Likewise, carbon capture: building that out now would be stupid if it diverted money that could be spent building renewables that displace carbon emission. It is also why building nukes is stupid: they displace way less carbon emissions, per dollar, than renewables, and first spend a decade displacing none at all. For the price of the coal burned waiting for the nuke to come on line, you could build that much solar, never mind what you are wasting on building the nuke, and it would start displacing carbon emissions almost immediately. Batteries and pumped hydro are very far from the only practical storage media. But the assertion you read that pumped hydro does not scale is deliberately deceptive.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  I would read Tom Murphy's posts from a different light. His message has consistently been 'unbounded exponentials aren't real, why are you pretending they are?'. In that light 'pumped hydro can't scale' means 'stop trying to use this for Petawatt hours of energy storage you idiot, you'll destroy everything'. Some of his more recent posts have been worryingly easy to coopt by the 'maek moar fossil fuels and nuclear' crowd, which his previous posts indicate he should be even more strongly opposed to. The general message of degrowth and steady state economy is positive even if 'pumped hydro can't scale indefinitely' sounds a bit like 'pumped hydro can't decarbonize the current scale of the economy', and he gets the scale required to maintain status quo consumption a bit wrong. I do wish he'd make this distinction clearer though.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    I would be satisfied to see him stick to facts.

moloch-hai 4y ago

Building out enough storage will be a huge task. We can't use much of it yet because we haven't the renewable generating capacity to charge it from. (Charging it from fossil fuels would be beyond stupid.) Several varieties are getting cheaper very fast, and new, cheaper ones are being invented, so when the time comes it will cost a lot less. Likewise, carbon capture: building that out now would be stupid if it diverted money that could be spent building renewables that displace carbon emission. It is also why building nukes is stupid: they displace way less carbon emissions, per dollar, than renewables, and first spend a decade displacing none at all. For the price of the coal burned waiting for the nuke to come on line, you could build that much solar, never mind what you are wasting on building the nuke, and it would start displacing carbon emissions almost immediately. Batteries and pumped hydro are very far from the only practical storage media. But the assertion you read that pumped hydro does not scale is deliberately deceptive.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
I would read Tom Murphy's posts from a different light. His message has consistently been 'unbounded exponentials aren't real, why are you pretending they are?'. In that light 'pumped hydro can't scale' means 'stop trying to use this for Petawatt hours of energy storage you idiot, you'll destroy everything'. Some of his more recent posts have been worryingly easy to coopt by the 'maek moar fossil fuels and nuclear' crowd, which his previous posts indicate he should be even more strongly opposed to. The general message of degrowth and steady state economy is positive even if 'pumped hydro can't scale indefinitely' sounds a bit like 'pumped hydro can't decarbonize the current scale of the economy', and he gets the scale required to maintain status quo consumption a bit wrong. I do wish he'd make this distinction clearer though.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  I would be satisfied to see him stick to facts.