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Pumped hydro storage only holds about 8-12 hours of power. To be economically viable to build you need to cycle it daily. It uses enormous amounts of land and

by XorNot 6mo ago

Pumped hydro storage only holds about 8-12 hours of power. To be economically viable to build you need to cycle it daily. It uses enormous amounts of land and capital to build, and is ongoingly dangerous in a unique way. If LiFePO4 can do 4 hours at full output already, and be placed anywhere using volume manufacturing to expand, then batteries are straight up better. Pumped hydro is an expensive dead end.

colechristensen 6mo ago
I'm not talking about pumped hydro.
- XorNot 6mo ago
  The you're talking about a geographical limited, extremely finite resource with a substantial ecological footprint.
  - colechristensen 6mo ago
    Yes... countries with extensive existing hydro using less of it by displacing it with solar, ultimately enabling the dismantling of some of the dams.
peterashford 6mo ago
In NZ we're discussing pumped hydro in Lake Onslow which will provides months of backup for the country
- hunterpayne 6mo ago
  Each way you move the energy costs you 50% in efficiency. Which is why pumped hydro has to have a 4x different in the price of energy in vs energy out to make it economically viable. That's why PG&E almost never uses their pumped storage. Only on days where the mid day price of power is very low does it make sense. And keep in mind that California is the ideal place for pumped storage. I seriously doubt that NZ has a 3x duck curve in its energy demand.
  - tialaramex 6mo ago
    It's nowhere close to 50%. Round-trip (so that's after both ways) efficiency is about 70-80% for a pumped storage scheme. Buy 10MW to pump the water, and get back 7-8MW when you release it. Contrast that with a reality here in the UK where the gas dominated spot price this morning when I woke up was about £180 per MWh, yet yesterday afternoon solar and wind had it down to £25 per MWh, so you could buy 100MWh of energy for £2500 but sell it less than a day later and make 400% on your investment in under 24 hours despite the efficiency loss. Very silly to insist this can't be profitable.
    - XorNot 6mo ago
      For the cost and expense of building a pumped hydro plant though, you could just deploy batteries which will do the same thing for a much lower capital and management investment and vastly simplified engineering. And a higher round-trip efficiency. LiFePO4 works to demand shift on a daily cycle just fine and scales better to solar input (where you need much higher power handling so you can charge it on limited sunlight - a pumped hydro system is limited to charging at about half its discharge rate).
      - peterashford 6mo ago
        I think that's the point about the lake Onslow project - its MASSIVE. So yes, expensive, but months of backup for the whole country would not be cheap even with batteries
        Earl_Bardsley 6mo ago
        It seems a long time ago now since I first proposed the possibility of pumped storage at Lake Onslow. But just confirming - having the equivalent amount of energy (4-5 TWh) in batteries would be impossibly expensive. Also, the batteries would need to be replaced from time to time.
        peterashford 6mo ago

by XorNot 6mo ago

colechristensen 6mo ago

I'm not talking about pumped hydro.

XorNot 6mo ago
The you're talking about a geographical limited, extremely finite resource with a substantial ecological footprint.
- colechristensen 6mo ago
  Yes... countries with extensive existing hydro using less of it by displacing it with solar, ultimately enabling the dismantling of some of the dams.

peterashford 6mo ago

In NZ we're discussing pumped hydro in Lake Onslow which will provides months of backup for the country

hunterpayne 6mo ago
Each way you move the energy costs you 50% in efficiency. Which is why pumped hydro has to have a 4x different in the price of energy in vs energy out to make it economically viable. That's why PG&E almost never uses their pumped storage. Only on days where the mid day price of power is very low does it make sense. And keep in mind that California is the ideal place for pumped storage. I seriously doubt that NZ has a 3x duck curve in its energy demand.
- tialaramex 6mo ago
  It's nowhere close to 50%. Round-trip (so that's after both ways) efficiency is about 70-80% for a pumped storage scheme. Buy 10MW to pump the water, and get back 7-8MW when you release it. Contrast that with a reality here in the UK where the gas dominated spot price this morning when I woke up was about £180 per MWh, yet yesterday afternoon solar and wind had it down to £25 per MWh, so you could buy 100MWh of energy for £2500 but sell it less than a day later and make 400% on your investment in under 24 hours despite the efficiency loss. Very silly to insist this can't be profitable.
  - XorNot 6mo ago
    For the cost and expense of building a pumped hydro plant though, you could just deploy batteries which will do the same thing for a much lower capital and management investment and vastly simplified engineering. And a higher round-trip efficiency. LiFePO4 works to demand shift on a daily cycle just fine and scales better to solar input (where you need much higher power handling so you can charge it on limited sunlight - a pumped hydro system is limited to charging at about half its discharge rate).
    - peterashford 6mo ago
      I think that's the point about the lake Onslow project - its MASSIVE. So yes, expensive, but months of backup for the whole country would not be cheap even with batteries
      - Earl_Bardsley 6mo ago
        It seems a long time ago now since I first proposed the possibility of pumped storage at Lake Onslow. But just confirming - having the equivalent amount of energy (4-5 TWh) in batteries would be impossibly expensive. Also, the batteries would need to be replaced from time to time.
        peterashford 6mo ago