why don’t they just use a gas generator? It doesn’t use as much power and can be switched on when ever needed.
The Seneca project has been on the planning boards for about 20 years. It was originally planned when gas was expensive and old coal plants were getting expensive to run to supply electricity during peak demand periods (usually during the day)
The idea was to run your efficient big plants at 100% round the clock and use excess production from the large modern plants to pump up the reservoir at night. Then run the hydro generators during the day to produce for peak demand.
What this article is doing is trying to produce interest in completing the project as a Green Technology project.
I read about 50% of a power plant's output is lost as waste heat at the plant. Instead of just pumping water up I wonder if some of it could be airlifted up using large evaporation ponds putting the waste heat to use. Natural solar heating would help too. When electricity is used in the city it also turns into waste heat. Possibly spraying water in a city would reduce the urban heat island effect while increasing rainfall and hydro power downwind. Adding nucleotides to the air would induce cloud formation providing shade and cooling for large areas during the day, and when wanted could provide a blanket effect at night.