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points by _heimdall 13 hours ago | 0 comments

There are interesting large scale projects that use hydro directly as power storage for renewables.

When the sun is out or wind is blowing, use excess energy to pump water up hill. When you're low on energy supply, open up the dam to run the water back down hill and through a hydro plant.

I've toyed with the idea of doing the same thing at a small scale on our farm but would need to build a second decent sized pond up hill of our main one.

[–] PaulDavisThe1st 11 hours ago

I've read that globally almost all the places that can do pumped hydro "storage" already exist. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, then while this is a really cool technology, we won't be getting much further with it.

[–] vivaldi_bt 10 hours ago

AFAIK, it is not really true. But you need several things to do a pumped storage: a big source of water (and it better to not be a salt one), a place where a reservoir can be made and an elevation difference between them. So I'd assume that the most of the places that can be easily used to make a pumped storage already have one.

[–] PaulDavisThe1st 7 hours ago

Isn't that more or less precisely what I said?

[–] very-old-sw 10 hours ago

It's possible in the Catskills in New York State (USA) but a proposed project there was killed by the greens. Who also killed fracking in NYS and a power line from Quebec to Mass and closed a nuclear plant and ....

[–] _heimdall 3 hours ago

Local concerns in my area killed a project as well, though I can say I agreed with their concerns. The power company wanted to cut the top off of a mountain to build the reservoir and were likely going to force a small community to relocate entirely. Not the best solution IMO.

[–] Smoosh 7 hours ago

Interesting that “the greens” have so much power in a country which is very strongly two-party in its politics. Or did you mean “environmentalists”?

[–] mixdup 9 hours ago

you would be way way better off just buying some actual batteries

[–] _heimdall 3 hours ago

That's where I ended up, we have a combination of repurposed batteries from wrecked cars and, soon at least, new batteries with CATL cells. I would prefer the hydro project bit digging a pond is a surprisingly expensive project today.