Posted on 07/25/2018 9:59:20 AM PDT by SpeedyInTexas
Hoover Dam helped transform the American West, harnessing the force of the Colorado River — along with millions of cubic feet of concrete and tens of millions of pounds of steel — to power millions of homes and businesses. It was one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century.
Now it is the focus of a distinctly 21st-century challenge: turning the dam into a vast reservoir of excess electricity, fed by the solar farms and wind turbines that represent the power sources of the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
If I understand the article, solar/wind would be used to pump water that has gone through the dam (generating electricity) back upstream behind the dam.
According to the article, the Hoover Dam "operates at just 20 percent of its potential, to avoid releasing too much water at once and flooding towns downstream". With this idea, more water can be sent through the dam, generating more electricity (improving on 20%) since the extra water can be pumped back upstream behind the dam.
Sounds like a much better idea than building a lot of lithium ion battery storage facilities.
No details on who pays the $3 billion dollar costs. Hopefully the communities who receive the electricity.
So to get the power out, you dump more water all at once?
“...solar farms and wind turbines that represent the power sources of the future...”
No, they don’t represent diddly-squat.
They’re doing one of those here. Pump the water uphill at night when power is cheap. Generate electricity when demand is high and power is expensive.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/oregon-transform-lake-battery-charge-electricity-grid
The process is called cogeneration — take water pump from catch basins & storage reservoirs, and send it back into the main reservoir to recoup energy at more favorable rate times. I was involved in a number of those projects many years ago…
The problem that the Enviroweenies will probably have is allocating a storage pool area for the reverse process (some obscure species in peril will probably be affected ;-)
I believe it is called “pumped storage hydroelectricity”. We have a dam that failed in Missouri that is used for this. At night, when electric demand is low, water is pumped into the reservoir. During the high-demand daytime, the water is released through the turbines. Of course there is a net energy loss, but it is a way to “store” energy.
In the Hoover Dam case, since they’re using solar as a source, they’d have to be pumping water during the day. And much of Arizona/California is consuming the water that has gone through the dam.
It should work - though I question the percentage of increase numbers in the article - seems like a whole lot of solar and wind power would be needed to pump that much water.
--I'd need to know more about this--off top of my head ,doesn't sound possible-
-I do like the idea of pumped storage where feasable---and you should see some of the comments about it from scientific ignoramuses whenever it is proposed---it gets accused of being "perpetual motion"--
Pump storage technology allows The Salt River Project dams in Arizona to produce electricity during the day, then use inexpensive off-peak power to replenish reservoir capacity by pumping tail waters back up behind the dams at night.
https://www.srpnet.com/water/dams/default.aspx
https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/AZ100/1930/power_vs_irrigation.html
“The world’s largest beaver dam in a remote area of northern Alberta, an animal-made structure so large it is visible from space.”
Well, this isn’t obviously about politics, so I’m SOLD!
JK.
Every few years, we see someone debunk “The Great Wall of China can be seen from space”.
https://www.universetoday.com/25364/can-you-see-the-great-wall-of-china-from-space/
But we can see a beaver dam from space?
It has been proven that reduction of flow in the Colorado river is very damaging to the ecosystem it represents and supports. Huge releases have been performed to cleanse the riverbed and remove the sandbars that form and create other problems. As to the comments on Solar, yes that is true. A huge number of windmills are inoperable and the cost to repair them is massive. Even when the Santa Anas are blowing out here when you drive by many of them are not turning. There only 3 areas here in California with sufficient volume and velocity of wind farms to have any real financial viability.
Major boondoggle alert IMHO, the Lakes behind the dam are low due to low rainfall and terrible work by the folks for the state who manage it, now they want to dig tunnels to bring it south which cuts off supplies for farms in the Central Valley
Graft and Greed, I am praying that something happens to all of these morons so we can clean house and do better.
And let’s not even bring up desalinization, the big DUH to help provide more water... Why are they saying no???
Conservation of energy. It will take more power to move the water back up than you got when it moved down.
From what I've heard of the crooks involved in anything having to do with the Colorado River, they'd better pay close attention to where this water is actually being pumped.
Aaaaannddd that's where I stopped reading.
This is a bullshit plan devised for one reason and one reason only - the solar power industry.
What will the solar panels do? They’ll power a pumping station 20 miles downstream, that will pump water back into the dam’s reservoir, making it again available for the basic generation of power that the dam’s turbines use - powered by water trying to escape the dam.
Water that would have gone to some other uses downstream would go back behind the dam.
That is the so-called “battery” affect they are claiming for this boondoggle.
And if water management of the system to start with just released a similar amount less water? The affect would be the same, without building a $3 billion boondoggle.
But how much is the waste? A 1% waste to turn a nuclear power plant which runs best at the same output 24 hours per day into a system which produces the most in late afternoons would be great. Not so good at a 50% waste.
“can be seen from space”
My car can be seen from space.
No one is suggesting that it is free energy.
That said, during the day solar can provide power to pump it back into the reservoir and wind can do it at any time. If there is excess energy available, refill the reservoir as future energy for use when demand is high.
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