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Hydro doesn't work so well when things freeze over. Geothermal on the other hand...

• bryanlarsen 11mo ago
  It doesn't get cold enough for long enough for lakes to freeze solid.
  • bawolff 11mo ago
    I imagine the thaw/freeze cycle would be hell on the equipment to run pumped hydro storage. Are there extant succesful examples of pumped hydro in cold regions?
    • gpm 11mo ago
      > Are there extant succesful examples of pumped hydro in cold regions? There's some pumped hydro at Niagara falls in Canada, which is far enough North that it should see a bit of a that/freeze cycle but is still a relatively mild climate. Don't know anything about what issues this does/doesn't present to them, just happen to know it exists.
      • numbsafari 11mo ago
        For reference, Niagara Falls is at roughly the same latitude as Barcelona and Milan. Vääksy, Finland, is approximately 1,250 miles (2k km) north of there, slightly north of Anchorage, Alaska.
        • gpm 11mo ago
          Latitude is a poor point of comparison here, North America tends to be substantially colder than Europe at the same latitude. Or concretely Niagara Falls goes from an average low of -6.44 C in February to 21.0 C in July. Barcelona an average low of 4 C in January to 20.2 C in August (according to the internet). But yes, it's warmer than Finland, just cold enough to see something of a freeze that cycle.
          • bawolff 11mo ago
            A couple days of -6 is probably a lot easier. Its probably still economical enough to heat the equipment on the days below 0. I imagine having a couple months of -20 is a bit different.
    • bryanlarsen 11mo ago
      A reversable pump-turbine is not significantly different from a standard hydro generation turbine, and there are tons of examples of those operating in cold regions.
    • kalleboo 11mo ago
      You have Juktan in northern Sweden which was pumped hydro from 1978-1996, and now they want to re-build it back into pumped hydro again https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juktans_kraftstation https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juktans_kraftstation
    • 7952 11mo ago
      Surely the turbines could be fed from subsurface water that is not frozen.
  • DownGoat 11mo ago
    Some of the hydro power is run-of-river hydro power stations, which has lower flow when it is cold.
• Tuna-Fish 11mo ago
  There's not much geothermal available when you are standing atop the baltic shield.
  • baq 11mo ago
    Either fusion or drill baby drill is necessary. Watt’s steam engine was absolutely horrible, but it was the worst steam engine ever built. If Finland builds the worst deep geothermal ever that still works, we can hope for better ones. Yeah I know drilling through ~8-10 kilometers of rock is kinda hard… they know, they tried, maybe it now is a good political climate to try again?
    • Tuna-Fish 11mo ago
      Or just fission, we know how to do that. 8-10km is not anywhere enough, the Baltic Shield is ~50km thick.
      • baq 11mo ago
        You don’t need to drill to magma, just deep enough to get to 120-130C rock. (‘Just’)
        • deleted 11mo ago
          [deleted]
    • distances 11mo ago
      > Yeah I know drilling through ~8-10 kilometers of rock is kinda hard… they know, they tried, maybe it now is a good political climate to try again? The Finnish 7 kilometer geothermal drilling failed commercially, I guess that's what you're referring to. Is there any reason to assume drilling deeper would work? Ref. https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaniemen_syv%C3%A4rei%C3%A4t https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaniemen_syv%C3%A4rei%C3%A4t
      • baq 11mo ago