Posted on 01/23/2022 5:21:38 AM PST by MtnClimber
The handle “renewables” is questionable. Oil is in many respects renewable. Known reserves are always increasing and it constantly seeps up from ocean depths. Wind and solar, with maintenance and recycling challenges, seem to many of us to be not renewable at all but rather creating more challenges with more use.
In very limited cases, based obviously on local geography, pumped storage works.
That said, there is a risk most are willing to ignore — what if the pipes break? Water has (& will) go somewhere and it ain’t gonna wait for you to pull your head out.
Case in point. I used to work for PacificGas&Electric. A project associated with mine was pump storage. Built and ready to go. Would have made us bushels of dosh, and on the year’s bonus for getting it done on time (i.e., personally it was worth $16k to me).
Well, the damned pipe broke and flooded a town. Ensuing lawsuit not only doomed the project but killed the bonus. Bugger.
Any project that does not seriously address the “What if?” issues is run by idiots.
“Of coarse what is not mentioned in my Lifted from wiki post is the cost in megawatts of pumping 27 billion US gallons 363 feet uphill at night.”
True. But it is an impressive project. I ran the numbers for the country based on their parameters. With 30 days of energy storage (amount required to get through worst-case bad spells), we’d need roughly 18,000 of the facilities (allowing for some down-time). The biggest immediate problem is finding or creating the storage reservoirs. In the case of this project, they had a huge lake on one side and high terrain on the other side, which was perfect for the application. Starts getting tougher to locate another 17,999 of them...
Giant balloons to store the unicorn farts.
Giant hamster wheels with gay pairs of unicorns perpetually chasing each other.
Sorry, but I’m a little confused. Could you explain the 3 hours of battery backup to start the generator?
“For me, I pay bout 17.81 per kwhr
FF is by far the economical choice”
Lucky you, Here in the bay area it’s about 40c/kwh.
Exactly where is this cheap RE?
The above tech also makes air district cooling cogen cheap you can suck the heat out of near by buildings to warm the liquid air up.
$19 a MWh using literally dirt cheap rocks as storage.
MIT is going the other way use the most abundant element on the earth’s crust to store heat.
https://www.solarpaces.org/mit-proposes-pv-to-discharge-energy-from-2400c-silicon-thermal-storage/
Even nukes know that storage is the future.
https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/storing-heat-nuclear-power-plants-could-improve
https://www.powermag.com/why-thermal-energy-storage-offers-hot-prospects-for-power/
It’s not if it’s when solar and wind are the dominate energy sources. Regardless of carbon in the air there simply is not enough fossil fuels for a population of 8 billion living at middle class standards of living and energy consumption. China added 500 MILLION to the middle class ,India is on track to add the same number, Africa and South America have large and growing middle classes. Humans need to move to solar and wind as fast as possible or the energy wars that are coming will be global. 4 billion in the middle class depletes conventional oil in 20 years or less add in heavy oil and tarsands only get you another 20. That’s only half the current world at a European Middle class energy consumption rate if they move up to American rates it goes faster. The other 4 billion also want and will fight to move up in energy consumption as well. Solar is the cheapest form of or primary power humans have EVER come up the IEA has the data proving this hundreds of pages of it Google it it will be the first result. Solar is also the only form of power distributed all over the planet that in a single hour of day light is more than a million times the yearly consumption of all humans on earth. The issue has never been supply it’s storage and transport to the not sunny areas. Less than 5% of the Sahara could power all of humanity’s energy usage at middle class levels all 8 billion of us not just the USA and EU. Again Google scholar has dozens of peer reviewed data sets to back those numbers take the time to read them.
Damn, good story! Hopefully just property damage downstream.
Tesla and Freyr are both building giant battery farms. Probably others as well.
“Of coarse what is not mentioned in my Lifted from wiki post is the cost in megawatts of pumping 27 billion US gallons 363 feet uphill at night.”
True, but you do get ‘most’ of it back. 70% in the case of Michigan, but maybe a bit higher with their refurb. But, on a national level, that is still a HUGE loss of energy.
Geothermal energy storage and the earth battery are both capable of storing significantly more energy than pumped hydro for a fraction of the costs. Rocks are literally dirt cheap. The aspect of using high capital low fuel cost nukes as peaker plants is also worth the read.
Use the find in off feature and look at the earth battery or just read the whole thing I did it’s worth the read.
If the antinuke zealots get out of the way GE Hitachi have a NRC approved design that can be built in America for $2500 or less per kw in capx with uranium prices what they are today that will make it under 5 cents kWh for a 40 year reactor life cheaper still if extended to 60. At this power level to shift demand peaks and load follow prestressed concrete steam accumulators or pipe rack types or the Westinghouse concrete thermal storage from the above MIY report all would make it even cheaper to use nuke power as the primary source with solar and wind as the other sources no gas turbines needed.
Thanks, I’ll take a look. But there won’t be any planet left to speak of if we really try to bring 4 billion people to Western standards with ‘renewables’ either.
Basically, it’s nukes, or let the market do its magic and determine winners and losers. Nothing top-down can work at this scale.
<>I believe the green energy plan is designed to fail in order to collapse our system.<>
You sir, are correct.
EVs, CRT, wokeism, climate, open borders, inflation are designed to work together . . . to destroy the middleclass, and as you say, open the way for totalitarian rule.
Did you use to work in the nuclear power industry? Just curious - you seem to be well versed in it.
The cost is almost nothing if the power company owns the facility and the nukes. Excess power on the grid from the nukes’ minimum loads can be burnt for free pumping the water. Or if there is no excess at that output level, increasing output by 10 or 20% to cover the pumps’ needs is a tiny cost, especially compared to brownouts or having to install other additional power generation for the daytime.
Do note that that facility doesn’t have 30 days of energy storage at max output. In a bad spell, as if the nukes go down, 27B gal reservoir, at 27MM gpm flow, gives you about 16 hours of water to empty. So multiply your 18M facilities by 45 to get your national 30 days of storage: 800M times that one facility!
Outskirts of DFW (Rowlett/Rockwall), we’re paying around $0.11/kWh if I remember correctly. Several cents per kWh increase if you choose the ‘green’ option that sources a higher solar percentage.
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