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Your capacity and storage requirements have increased even more because you are intoducing inefficiencies. You need to use power to pump it up the hill and further losses through evaporation, regeneration etc.
Your capacity and storage requirements have increased even more because you are intoducing inefficiencies. You need to use power to pump it up the hill and further losses through evaporation, regeneration etc.
True. Most facilities are between 70% and 80% for "round trip" efficiency. Which isn't bad, but still entails substantial losses.
We would need something on the order of 10,000 large pumped storage facilities in order to have a 7 day power supply for the USA. If we think 7 days of storage is not necessary, even one day of storage is still 1400 large pumped storage facilities.
My local electric is partially from pumped storage.
I won't even argue the point about the wind not blowing or the sun not shining for a week. It doesn't happen. And, if it did, it would be raining and hydro would be making up a lot.
What you are saying is what Obama said - we need better large infrastructure for moving it from place to place.
I would assume pumped storage output depends on the height and volume of the water above the generation station. Mt Hood (above Portland) for example, might be able to store massive amounts in a small valley a couple thousand feet up....which would be a LOT of energy.
But this whole bit about the wind not blowing is really irrelevant. The transition is already happening and it is happening slowly and methodically and, believe me, the engineers have some idea what they are doing. In other words, there will be enough "backup" of hydro, storage and nat gas (the cleanest option, probably) to allow us to use oil for other stuff like jet fuel and making plastics, etc.
This debate reminds me of folks having similar discussions about cars in 1910. After all, the roads were poor so what good were cars? Also, all those tens of thousands of horse employees would be put out of work.
In other words, the time to debate has passed. We are in the midst of action and the die has already been cast. The only question is how quickly we move, and 16GW in one year installed is completely mind blowing.
Any patriotic or caring (environment) Americans should be on the same "side" of this debate. The future is here and it's more efficient and greener than the past.
BTW, so-called "red" states are some of the biggest backers of wind energy because they have so much of it - texas, for example, and OK.
Those who believe in the Power of Herr Trump to stop renewables and go back to King Coal are going to have great disappointment, as they will with all his other promises. He knows nothing and therefore cannot accomplish anything - just a nagging small bump in the road.
My local electric is partially from pumped storage.
I won't even argue the point about the wind not blowing or the sun not shining for a week. It doesn't happen. And, if it did, it would be raining and hydro would be making up a lot.
The electrical system needs to be built for the "worst case" scenario: a week of cloudy weather with little wind. It might not happen often, but it's a possibility. We are not a society tolerant of blackouts. Seven days of storage ensues that we don't have blackouts and brownouts during long periods of calm, cloudy weather in the winter.
One way of dealing with the problem is to vastly "overbuild" the solar and wind capacity so that we still have enough power with only enough storage for a cloudy winter week with light winds. But that won't be economically efficient, if you have to build 10x the capacity that would be needed for an "average" amount of sun and wind.
Nobody is suggesting that it is impossible to add a large amount of solar and wind to the grid. The Germans did it. But they pay electricity rates similar to that of Hawaii. If you don't mind your electric bill going up by a factor of 3 or 4, then we can do it. And you must also be willing to have traditional coal and gas plants operating on "stand-by" for calm cloudy conditions.
I won't even argue the point about the wind not blowing or the sun not shining for a week. It doesn't happen. And, if it did, it would be raining and hydro would be making up a lot.
This is a very real scenario here in the Northeast that happens all the time and there is more issues than that. As you know the further you go North the shorter the days are in the winter, when the sun rises it needs to go through a huge amount of atmosphere and efficiency of the solar panels is minimal, as the angle of the sun increases so does the efficiency. During these months you may only have about 4 or 5 hour window when they are most efficient and producing a lot of electric assuming it's not cloudy.
Last but not least it's between 7 and 8AM that peak demand is usually achieved during cold weather events, in some cases record setting demand.
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there will be enough "backup" of hydro, storage and nat gas (the cleanest option, probably)
You would not use hydro as backup unless it was pumped storage and backup solutions with gas, coal or nuclear come with substantial cost.
The analogy i used before is quite simple to understand. If you have a requirement to drive a car 24/7 that dictates you buy a gasoline powered vehicle, and electric vehicle cannot meet your requirement. You can go out and buy an electric vehicle to meet your requirement for 3 hours. That doubles your capital investment when the capital investment in a gasoline powered vehicle by itself can already meet your requirements.
Energy experts give Trump the hard truth: You can’t bring coal back
Coal wasn’t killed by a political “war” — cheap renewables and fracked gas were the culprits.
Electricity from solar and wind is great...unless you like having electricity on nights with no wind. During those times, you need power from conventional sources like coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro.
We already have existing standby capacity for when those coal and nuclear units are out of commission. It requires nothing new.
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