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I'm afraid the physics just don't work out for Hydro. See the Hydro section of Sustainable Energy - without the hot air by David JC MacKay: http://www.withou

by tezza 13y ago

I'm afraid the physics just don't work out for Hydro. See the Hydro section of Sustainable Energy - without the hot air by David JC MacKay: http://www.withouthotair.com/c8/page_55.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c8/page_55.shtml Even though the land mass of the US is larger than the UK, it's hard to see hydro being more than MacKay's 2kW per day per person... That's two 40W light bulbs left on all day.

frezik 13y ago
That's not the same thing. In a standard hydroelectric dam, you need an existing river to create electricity. The goal of pumped storage isn't to create new electricity, but to store large amounts of unused baseload power. This can be done with a standard hydroelectric dam by pumping the water back up into the lake behind the dam, but it can also be an entirely artificial reservoir.