Hoover dam as giant battery

[Piotrsko]

The ranger was built using FLA, but hauling 1200 lbs around buggered up the handling and acceleration. They were still going strong 4 years into it. Bought the volt pack because at the time they were 400 lbs and dirt cheap. Went from being recyclable to one shot, gave up the simplicity FLA provides. $750 a pack had it's siren song. Now I hope to find someone who will take volt packs when they die.

[Big Dave]

Back to the original post.

The thing that kills pumped storage in the West in general (anyplace west of the Hundredth Meridian) is water.

In the west water is life. In western NE, you can buy land for $10/acre but it is worthless without the water rights. Water in the west is far too vital to use for pumping back and forth between dams.

If the US were to want to make use of pumped storage the best area is in the central Appalachians. Roughly from the NC-SC line north to the St.Lawrence River, bounded on the east by the Appalachian divide and on the west by more or less 75 miles depending on the terrain.

There are a bunch of mountain valleys in that are that are nearly uninhabited (and becoming moreso as time goes on) that could be dammed up with a pair of dams and a powerhouse and connected to the grid for bringing in/out vast amounts of energy. Evaporation is not an issue. The area is borderline rain forest -50-80 inches of rain a year. That much rain will give all the dams a natural hydro boost.

There are already two big pumped storage dams there that I know of. Smith Mountain Lake on the VA/NC line and Bath County VA.

Grasp the scale. I'm talking flooding 25-40 mountain valleys in western NC, eastern TN, western VA, eastern KY, central WV, western/central PA, and western NY. Maybe spare the valleys needed for transportation like the Potomac Valley and the New River (major railroads) will be spared.

You could put wind turbines on the Appalachian Divide. You'd have to squash a few hundred thousand NIMBYs, but you're gonna have to relocate them anyway. Hopefully somebody can come up with a wind turbine that cn pay for its own maintenance. Solar? Forget about it. Like I said, the area is a rain forest. Cloudy most of the time. There is still lots of gas and coal in the region and they run hooked to the dams and the dmas provide electricity to the East Coast and Midwest.

[Big Dave]

As for southern California, there is only one way to do it.

Bring in natural gas by pipelines. Site the simple-cycles (don't need cooling water) on mountains at the state line. the wind howls there and will disperse the carbon dioxide.

Only other thing that will work is nuclear power.

[Big Dave]

Another area that may be valid for pumped storage in the Tennessee Valley.

Many of the depression-era dams will need to be replaced as the underlying limestone rock is slowly dissolving. Instead of one simple hydro plant, build two with somewhat lower head to extend support strata life.


Making pumped storage sites is less wasteful than simply draining and destroying the existing sites.


BTW, on energy, I am 100% in the "all of the above" camp. Everything has a role to play.

[freebeard]

All the above plus lay off the loud pedal.

I don't think pumped storage is wasteful of water, it just goes 'round and 'round. It is inefficient compared to gravity and steel wheels on rails.

Hoover dam is interesting because all the infrastructure is there except for the tunnel and pumps.

[Big Dave]

The question was raised about the cost of transporting natural gas.

From an industrial gas transport bill: Shipping 1 MMBTU of gas from Henry Hub, LA (about halfway between Houston and New Orleans to a town about 75 miles NW of Indianapolis cost 53.3 cents per MMBTU.

That distance is about the same as the distance from the Permian Basin of west Texas to LA.

For electricity (>346 kV) the loss is 1% for every 30 miles. So sending electricity from the Permian Basin to LA would involve a 50% loss of power.


As for Hoover Dam, if there is no dam below Hoover, all water once through the Hoover powerhouse would be "lost" into the Imperial Valley farms and would not be able to be pumped back up.

[freebeard]

"If..."

From Permalink #12:

No need to carve out a lower reservoir, it already exists in the form of Lake Mohave that is formed by Davis Dam. Davis Dam is about 40 miles downstream from my estimating on Google Maps, and looks to maintain its water level pretty much at the level of Hoover Dam's base. Below Davis Dam is Parker Dam which forms Lake Havasu.
As for letting more water through, all of the discharge from Hoover Dam currently goes through its powerhouses at a fraction of their peak capacity.

[sendler]

40 miles is obviously way too far to economically lay giant high pressure pipes.

[freebeard]

This is my interpretation of the published info: 40 miles dam-to-dam, 20 miles from reservoir to dam.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

As for southern California, there is only one way to do it.

Bring in natural gas by pipelines. Site the simple-cycles (don't need cooling water) on mountains at the state line. the wind howls there and will disperse the carbon dioxide.

Only other thing that will work is nuclear power.

Outside of a few long standing power projects in Northern California and the Salton Sea area , most of the possible sites lay untapped. A colleague of mine inspects the Salton Sea power plants for environmental effects. Outside of concerns about ground water intrusion, they run night and day pumping out power to baseline the renewable projects power outputs. We do not have more of them for the same reason nuclear power plants are not being built. Fear. The general public is fearful these plants will cause the "big one" (earthquake) to hit. It takes years of study and legal proceedings to just approve a site. Building is a simple 5 year or less time frame.

Nuclear power is the logical conclusion. If our State would allow equal discussion. It is too steeped in fearful legislation. They fear everything it seems. This education starts at grade school levels where energy produced from wind, waves and sun is good. Everything else is bad. My son was sent to the principles office for arguing that nuclear is clean and that his dad knows more than the teachers about the subject. Eight years old and fighting the good fight!