There was one clown here recently that didn’t bother to do the math and figured that we could use pumped storage for storing the amount of energy required.
I did the math, and we’d have to be willing to empty the Great Lakes to get the energy required to get through the worst-case scenarios.
...and then what gets done with all that water? If you send it down the Mississippi, and ignoring the flooding that would occur, you no longer have great lakes, so you have to start trying to refill them with rain and runoff. Not very smart and would likely take years. If you do what’s done by TVA, where they do have pumped storage, you need multiple lakes to move water back and forth...which is the case there. But where we do put a second set of Great Lakes - they’re pretty damn big as it is!
And no, I won’t talk about the hundreds of Hoover Dams required to power things at night or pump up the water during the day...
The Ludington Pumped Storage Plant is a hydroelectric plant and reservoir in Ludington, Michigan. It was built between 1969 and 1973 at a cost of $315 million and is owned jointly by Consumers Energy and DTE Energy and operated by Consumers Energy. At the time of its construction, it was the largest pumped storage hydroelectric facility in the world.
It consists of a reservoir 110 feet (34 m) deep, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) long, and one mile (1.6 km) wide which holds 27 billion US gallons (100 Gl) or 82859 acre-feet of water. The 1.3-square-mile (3.4 km2) reservoir is located on the banks of Lake Michigan. Because impervious bedrock is more than 800 feet (240 m) below the reservoir, the builders had to line the reservoir with a layer of asphalt and clay to prevent water seeping into the ground.
The power plant consists of six reversible turbines that can each generate 312 megawatts of electricity for a total output of 1,872 megawatts. Water is delivered from the upper reservoir to the turbines by six penstocks each 1,100 feet (340 m) long that taper from 28 to 24 feet (8.5 to 7.3 m) in diameter.
At night, during low demand for electricity, the turbines run in reverse to pump water 363 feet (111 m) uphill from Lake Michigan into the reservoir. The plant takes advantage of the natural steep sand dune landform of eastern Lake Michigan. During periods of peak demand water is released to generate power. Electrical generation can begin within two minutes with peak electric output of 1872 MW achieved in under 30 minutes. Maximum water flow is over 33 million US gallons (120,000 m3) per minute.
This process was designed to level the load of nearby nuclear power plants on the grid. It also replaces the need to build natural gas peak power plants used only during high demand. The Ludington Pumped Storage plant is connected to six 345-kV Transmission lines, all owned and maintained by METC, a subsidiary of ITC Holdings.
The project was given the 1973 award for "Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement" by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
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.