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Were the dams ineffective or is the regulation ineffective?
by paulsutter 3y ago
Were the dams ineffective or is the regulation ineffective?
- habinero 3y agoNeither. Almost all of the dams involved were built before 1920 and before we had powergrids. They were usually originally intended for some local industrial use and put out a (now) negligible amount of power. They're also at the end of their service life. You can't leave them, they will eventually burst and kill people. Replacing them is useless, they don't do anything useful. The best solution is to remove them, which has the huge added bonus of unclogging the rivers and restoring the ecosystem and fish habitat.
- bobthepanda 3y agoAlso, the dams silt up over time anyways, so unless you dredge them they are not very good at generating power if the river generates enough silt. Pumped hydro is more promising in this regard; they don't have to be in the river course itself, so do not run into silting issues, or block fish migration, or any of many other negatives. And because they are basically only required to be battery storage in hours, days or weeks rather than a main source of power generation, they can also be much smaller.