4 ms·
Interesting -- do you think the idea of pumping tons of water up and down a mountain for long-term, high-capacity energy storage could help bridge that gap?
by Centigonal 14y ago
Interesting -- do you think the idea of pumping tons of water up and down a mountain for long-term, high-capacity energy storage could help bridge that gap?
- iaw 14y agoI've thought about this before but the issues is that the energy is dinged 3 times by inefficiency losses. First when you capture it from the sun(or whatever), then when you pump it and convert it to potential, then when you let it out and use it to generate. They actually already do this to some extent, I think the "St. Lawrence Pump Station" is one facility.
- snowwindwaves 14y agothey already do this a lot more than to some extent, it is quite common. Batteries have an internal impedance as well which means losses putting energy in and taking it out. 15% loss on a battery is a reasonable estimate
- DaniFong 14y agoPeople are... completely out of touch with the scale of our industrial infrastructure. Cities us 3% of the Earth's land surface. Fossil fuels inject power into earth at a rate 3x the tides. We intercept about 30% of the total power generation we could get from rainfall. On the topic of energy storage, for the USA you'd need a lower reservoir approximately the size of Lake Erie, and a flow rate 150x that of Niagara Falls. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-stor... I'm not saying it can't be done -- energy storage at this scale has to be done for a switch to renewables -- I'm saying that the scale is absolutely immense.