Some end-use applications can provide storage of excess energy. The classic example is chilled-water storage for building or campus A/C, in which a large water tank is chilled at night when energy is less expensive and that water is used for the A/C in the day. Such systems can be brought online relatively quickly, any time of day, to absorb grid excess.
But, to be blunt, relatively little electric power goes into such applications.
Concur with your summary about the limits of pumped storage: Worked in the control room of one controlled from south Philly, and on the electronic cabinets of a second in the northwest GA mountians.
Siting is the problem: there just aren’t too many places left where you can locate a dam in the valley AND a second dam up the hill in the mountain where the pipes can connect both.
Lots of inefficiencies in pumped storage: electricity-to-motor conversion, pump-to-water-movement-uphill conversion,water-resistance-both-ways losses,water-movement-downhill-to-water-generator-rotation conversion, water-generator-back-to-electricity conversion, and finally, the losses in the power lines to and from the pump storage unit.
Pump storage requires that the cost of power at night (when water is pumped uphill) be much less than that of power when it is needed in the early evenings and mornings - but it usually is - unless there is a drought.
And, of course, overhead losses, labor costs, and construction costs, repair costs, land costs, EPA restrictions.....
All are relatively low, but every erg is power lost.
Concur with your summary about the limits of pumped storage: Worked in the control room of one controlled from south Philly, and on the electronic cabinets of a second in the northwest GA mountians.
Siting is the problem: there just aren’t too many places left where you can locate a dam in the valley AND a second dam up the hill in the mountain where the pipes can connect both.
Lots of inefficiencies in pumped storage: electricity-to-motor conversion, pump-to-water-movement-uphill conversion,water-resistance-both-ways losses,water-movement-downhill-to-water-generator-rotation conversion, water-generator-back-to-electricity conversion, and finally, the losses in the power lines to and from the pump storage unit.
Pump storage requires that the cost of power at night (when water is pumped uphill) be much less than that of power when it is needed in the early evenings and mornings - but it usually is - unless there is a drought.
And, of course, overhead losses, labor costs, and construction costs, repair costs, land costs, EPA restrictions.....
All are relatively low, but every erg is power lost.