5 ms·

A New Hydropower Boom Uses Pumped Storage, Not Giant Dams

18 points by tysone 3y ago

foxyv 3y ago
Pumped storage efficiency is about 80% which is on par with Lead Acid batteries. At $106 to $200 per kwh, pumped hydro beats battery storage which costs about $400 to $500 per kwh. This seems like an excellent idea for large scale storage of energy, the small difference in efficiency will be offset hugely by the capital costs. Especially if you have grid scale batteries to manage frequencies while turbines come up to speed. Looking forward to seeing how this goes. It would be a wicked great way of transporting water over mountains too. They already do something similar for the Colorado river aqueduct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Aqueduct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Aqueduct
- avidiax 3y ago
  I was surprised that the efficiency is 70-80%.[1] I'm also a bit surprised that it's not somehow preferable to have some kind of idle industrial capacity like aluminum smelting or electroplating that simply operates when the price of power is low. But perhaps the capital requirements for having a semi-idle aluminum smelter are greater than 1/0.8 x the capital costs of pumped storage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
  - icegreentea2 3y ago
    You can use pumped hydro to address two different, but related problems: a) What to do with excess power at any given time. b) How to address production shortfall at any given time. Idle industrial capacity only addresses how to extract value from a), but doesn't really address b (except indirectly by giving you some incentive to just really overbuild your capacity). So from a system standpoint, the idle capacity approach doesn't just have the extra capital cost of your industrial plants, you also have the capital cost to build out your generation capacity even more.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
    At utility scale, the problem we need to solve with storage is meeting baseload demand with storage of energy generated with intermittent sources like solar. The goal here is turn off carbon-emitting baseload plants. Building a new industrial facility and operating it at idle would not decrease baseload demand, so it wouldn’t solve that problem. Intermittent users help finance intermittent generators, so there’s some value in this idea.
  - foxyv 3y ago
    Load shedding is already a thing with most modern grids. Many industrial locations like steel and concrete plants get paid to reduce usage during peak hours. But this only goes so far unless you are willing to sweat it out during a heat wave and lose the contents of your freezer/supermarket. A huge goal of storage is to reduce the need for load management/shedding during shortfalls and use of natural gas peaker plants. Industrial only accounts for about 25% of our electricity usage. Note: These plants, if located properly, can also have greater than 100% efficiency during the wet season due to rainfall capture. This is how traditional hydropower works.
  - jjk166 3y ago
    With traditional fossil fuels, you would just lower power production when demand is low. The need for large scale storage really arises from renewables like solar where you might get plenty of power over the course of the day, but there are going to be extended periods (namely night) where it doesn't matter how much excess capacity you have, you're not generating power.

18 points by tysone 3y ago

Pumped storage efficiency is about 80% which is on par with Lead Acid batteries. At $106 to $200 per kwh, pumped hydro beats battery storage which costs about $400 to $500 per kwh. This seems like an excellent idea for large scale storage of energy, the small difference in efficiency will be offset hugely by the capital costs. Especially if you have grid scale batteries to manage frequencies while turbines come up to speed. Looking forward to seeing how this goes. It would be a wicked great way of transporting water over mountains too. They already do something similar for the Colorado river aqueduct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Aqueduct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Aqueduct

avidiax 3y ago
I was surprised that the efficiency is 70-80%.[1] I'm also a bit surprised that it's not somehow preferable to have some kind of idle industrial capacity like aluminum smelting or electroplating that simply operates when the price of power is low. But perhaps the capital requirements for having a semi-idle aluminum smelter are greater than 1/0.8 x the capital costs of pumped storage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  You can use pumped hydro to address two different, but related problems: a) What to do with excess power at any given time. b) How to address production shortfall at any given time. Idle industrial capacity only addresses how to extract value from a), but doesn't really address b (except indirectly by giving you some incentive to just really overbuild your capacity). So from a system standpoint, the idle capacity approach doesn't just have the extra capital cost of your industrial plants, you also have the capital cost to build out your generation capacity even more.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
  At utility scale, the problem we need to solve with storage is meeting baseload demand with storage of energy generated with intermittent sources like solar. The goal here is turn off carbon-emitting baseload plants. Building a new industrial facility and operating it at idle would not decrease baseload demand, so it wouldn’t solve that problem. Intermittent users help finance intermittent generators, so there’s some value in this idea.
- foxyv 3y ago
  Load shedding is already a thing with most modern grids. Many industrial locations like steel and concrete plants get paid to reduce usage during peak hours. But this only goes so far unless you are willing to sweat it out during a heat wave and lose the contents of your freezer/supermarket. A huge goal of storage is to reduce the need for load management/shedding during shortfalls and use of natural gas peaker plants. Industrial only accounts for about 25% of our electricity usage. Note: These plants, if located properly, can also have greater than 100% efficiency during the wet season due to rainfall capture. This is how traditional hydropower works.
- jjk166 3y ago
  With traditional fossil fuels, you would just lower power production when demand is low. The need for large scale storage really arises from renewables like solar where you might get plenty of power over the course of the day, but there are going to be extended periods (namely night) where it doesn't matter how much excess capacity you have, you're not generating power.