Any storage mechanism is going to lose energy in the process.
This was new in about 1890.
why don’t they just use a gas generator? It doesn’t use as much power and can be switched on when ever needed.
Sounds like it’s based on the same principles as Bronco Bomber’s stimulus plan.
Yeah it sounds stupid, but it is not as stupid as it sounds. This may just be working solution to a problem.
Your local water tower works the same way.
They pump it full at night when there is little water use, then allow it to flow during the day.
Otherwise there might be periods of low water flow in high demand time periods during the day.
Otherwise they would have to have pumps twice as large to handle peak flow in the daytime, which would sit idle at night
Pumped storage has been around for a long time.
It’s a way of leveling out demand. It isn’t efficient to run power plants up and down. they like to run at a constant speed. When the demand is light, some of the power is shunted off to run turbine pumps that pump water uphill behind a dam. When demand is high, the water is let down through the penstocks and the turbine motors become generators (or more precisely, alternators, I guess). and that electrical power is fed into the grid.
Thermodynamically, yes, it does use more power than it produces (there is no perpetual motion machine). But, overall, it is useful to level out loads without keeping a lot of ‘spinning reserve’. A lot of peak demand generation has moved to gas turbine plants that can be brought up quickly. Steam plants need days to get up from a cold start.
They use a coal fired plant to pump the water when the wind stops.
There are several of these facilities across the country and have been for years. They are meant to store up power while demand is low (cheaper).. and pump out power when demand is high (expensive).
Buy low sell high type thing. This isn’t green crap.
So why don’t they just divert the water further upstream via an aqueduct to the reservoir instead of pumping?
Both the pumped storage and the nuclear plants suffered the same fate.
Environmental wacko's forced nuclear plants to multiply their costs by delays, protesters, siting, needless environmental lawsuits, etc., which ultimately didn't stop their construction at the time, but prevents NEW plants from being built, to appease the greenies.
The same situation occurred when pumped storage was tried to be built, where greenies, tree-huggers, and environmentalists delayed them to the point of them becoming un-economic to build and were abandoned as a source of power.
In the end, some of the best generation in the East are the Bath County Hydro plant of Allegheny Power Company, and the Seneca Plant in PA. Too bad the plants are gonna be antiques, as siting new plants today is nearly impossible, and energy is so much needed. We are stuck with the buddy system of "green power", where if you have a buddy in Congress, you get taxpayer money for green power albatrosses, which are totally insufficient to meet today's energy needs and cannot compete economically on their own. Think "Solyndra", and you see what's goin' on.
Follow the money (and the votes).
Any energy storage system must consume some energy.
They idea that makes it still work is to use cheaper off-peak power output to release during the more expensive peak time period.
This statement from this environut clearly demonstrates the true motives behind environmental groups. They are not near as concerned with conservation as they are preventing power companies from gaining a profit.
A big advantage money saver. A peaking plant must be manned 24/7.
***The station also uses more electricity than it generates, ****
These have been around for quite a while. The way it works is when you have a “peak” demand, the cost of electricity goes way up. The gates are opened and the water flows through the turbines to produce this electricity to take advantage of this high cost time.
At night, when the price of electricity falls, the pumps are turned on allowing the water to be pumped back to the upper pond at a lower cost. The electricity to operate these pumps comes from other power plant sources.
The turbines produce high cost electricity during the day.
The pumps use MORE low cost electricity to pump the water back to the upper pond at night.
Funny how Al Gore never mentions that fact.
IIRC it is three KW to pump up, and two KW generation on the way down. Therefore the cost per KW nightime had to be 2/3 or less the cost per KW daytime.
The math worked in 1975, not sure now with fairly efficient gas fired combined cycle generation widely installed.