3 ms·
> Point is, we can’t just “save the water”. The storage level at Lake Mead has an annual spread of ~100ft; the dam is currently at historic low capacity and co
by jakewins 3y ago
> Point is, we can’t just “save the water”.
The storage level at Lake Mead has an annual spread of ~100ft; the dam is currently at historic low capacity and could hold about twice its current level: https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/lakemead_line.pdf https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/lakemead_line.pdf
Reservervoir dams certainly can store water and dispense it when appropriate.
Like I said, this is happening every day already, you can see it in the hourly data on wind/hydro generation share, and you can see it in the annual storage capacity data for Norwegian hydro.
- xyzzyz 3y agoYes, we can do this for some dams, but not enough to move the needle. Hoover Dam’s generating power is quite tiny relative to the total storage needs, and if you add up all the other viable dams, you’ll find that it doesn’t add up to a lot. To put it in context: Columbia River basin produces 40% of US hydroelectricity. Out of 14 dams on Columbia River, 12 of them produce (each individually) more electricity than Hoover Dam, most by a factor of 3x or more. Very little of it can be turned into storage as of today, what does not get used must be spilled. This is not to say that using dams for energy storage is a bad idea, it’s not. It just will not work well in practice with most of currently existing dams, at least without huge retrofits and/or screwing over downstream water consumers and upstream reservoir users.