> which is close enough to your 521MWh that I'm pretty happy. Nice! And Dinorwig runs around 72% round-trip efficiency, which is higher than I expect to see he

> which is close enough to your 521MWh that I'm pretty happy. Nice! And Dinorwig runs around 72% round-trip efficiency, which is higher than I expect to see here simply on account of scale, but also in the ballpark. > generate power while filling the locks as the water falls down... Now that's an interesting one. There are already lock systems where there's two parallel chains, and the ascending and descending locks operate in lock-step, with the two locks first equalizing water with each other, before the ascending takes water from above and the descending releases water to below. So that doubles the amount of traffic that can be handled by the same amount of water. Presumably building twice the infrastructure would be cost-prohibitive or they would've done it over the preceding decade, but storing the water's energy could be quite a bit cheaper and smaller. Edit: Much simpler, takes more space, saves almost as much water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_project#Water_saving_basins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_project... It ends up being a lot like linking the shafts of all the pumps, with extra steps for control, eh? Edit: Oh. Yeah. Okay, at each lock, you've got three pumps on a common shaft, with clutches: (fill turbine)--[clutch]--(lift pump)--[clutch]--(drain turbine) Whether you're filling or draining, you clutch that turbine to the lift pump, and lift some water upward as the working water flows downward. No electricity needed. Hmm. Alright, who wants to go pitch a project?