Hoover dam as giant battery

[sendler]

Originally Posted by California98Civic

I am not sure that Forbes piece is accurate. Page 28 and 29 of the 2013 study it cites for the graph show significantly more varied and different results: http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Wei...I_preprint.pdf

You mean the difference between these two charts?
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If anyone does not think these reserchers are in the ball park can you show us where they went wrong?
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http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Wei...I_preprint.pdf
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[oil pan 4]

Solar having half the roi with storage sounds about right for large scale.
For an individual household I think it would be even lower because you over panel by 2 to 3 time what you need to get buy in a single day then your battery needs to be at least 3 or 4 times what you use in a single day.

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by sendler

You mean the difference between these two charts?
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If anyone does not think these reserchers are in the ball park can you show us where they went wrong?
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http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Wei...I_preprint.pdf
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Thanks for looking. I'm very busy with work and I can't review the materials again but yes I think part of the problem was in the difference between the charts. Sorry I can't do better than that right now. It also troubles me the environmental and health cost of the fossil fuels and the nuclear is not being figured in. I live near a nuclear power plant designed exactly like Fukushima and sitting right on the beach near a major fault in California offshore. Yet because there's nowhere to store the nuclear spent fuel rods yet all the material is still sitting in that site as a dozen sites all around the world. I think the air pollution of coal is part of its economic cost and should be included and such analysis. And I think the long-term storage of nuclear spent fuel rods should be figured into the cost. Apologies if I'm missing something in the article. Oh, well I'm dictating text let me quickly say I also I'm concerned about the environmental costs of solar. Giants were raised even arranged in the desert can harm ecosystem is pretty substantially because the Shadows that create on the ground. All of it should be factored into cost.

[oil pan 4]

My cheap solar install I should be able to do at least 4. With 7 being on the edge of the realm of possible.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Angel And The Wolf

It would be better to just add the solar created electricity to the grid.

The problem is that you can't just arbitrarily add energy to the grid, there has to be something out there to immediately* use the energy you put in. Try to put in too much or too little, and you risk destabilizing the grid and causing a blackout.

Most of the generation on the grid is can be throttled, at least within a range. You can let more or less water out of your dam, burn more or less fuel in your fossil fuel plant, &c. But there are limits on these. You may be required to maintain river flow within certain ranges; if you run your FF plant outside its most efficient range, you're wasting fuel, and so on.

But solar & wind aren't really throttable. You use what it produces, or it is wasted. The throttable generation on the grid can compensate for some of this, but only a limited amount. So if you have excess solar or wind power being generated, storing it - even relatively inefficiently - is better than just throwing it away.

*OK, technically that's not quite true, but it's a really good approximation. Adding energy will slightly increase the voltage & frequency, just as trying to draw more than is going in lowers voltage & frequency, causing "brownouts".

[freebeard]

There is a case for energy conservation, is there not?

I'd be in favor of a rack railroad on the downstream face of the dam loaded with depleted uranium. Instead of making it into ammunition and spraying it around the mid-East.

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by freebeard

There is a case for energy conservation, is there not?
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Yes, there is. We (partly) represent it here on EM. More go, lots of fun, less energy. That's my "performance". I love the hotrods too, but a lot of the hotrodder stuff I see is really stale. Even ratrodding is getting stale. Atleast we are still "reviled."

[NeilBlanchard]

I learned more about this Hoover Dam as pumped hydro storage proposal - and it is wrong headed. It might sound good, but we can do much better, for less money, and with almost no downsides - with battery storage.

[oil pan 4]

What batteries?
If battery resources are diverted to grid storage then there won't be enough battery materials to build electric vehicles.
A big, heavy, low density, cheap, common material, thats also efficient like a lithium battery needs to be developed.

Pumped hydro uses 2 things we have a lot of. Steel pipe and energy.
Not as efficient as lithium chemistry, but there will never be tons of worn out batteries to recycle.

[Piotrsko]

Actually there is enough battery as flooded lead acid. Downsides are heavy (don't care) and short lived due to sulphation. Low efficiency. Not so much toxic. 100% recyclable. My old usaf specialty had 50 ton of them in the silos that they were always swapping in & out.