Comment on 'No-water' hydropower turns England's hills into green and pleasant batteries
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m not gonna jump on board with this one immediately, there’s a few things about it that aren’t wowwing me.
- R-19 is their magical ‘denser than water’ fluid. They don’t have to be so secretive and if they are going to be secretive then I’m gonna assume it’s not good for us.
- it’s only really so that you can get the same amount of power from half the height. they aren’t selling it as “store twice as much energy”, but rather “use in locations that have half as much height”. The thing is that the UK has used this kind of power for decades, there are old coal mines and natural cave formations that have large water flows. the water is pumped to the top when you have an excess, and dropped to power during demand. This system seems far better in general, even without the mysterious R-19 fluid. We don’t /not/ have height differences in the UK, we have lots.
bernieecclestoned@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
It’s Intellectual Property. Investors like IP so it can be licensed for royalties and bumps up the balance sheet.
Hydro is very geographically restricted, halving the height makes it less so.
I like the idea of using old coal mines, there’s been pilot projects in Germany and Australia but I’ve never seen them amount to anything
roguetrick@kbin.social 1 year ago
Calcium carbonate.
ilikekeyboards@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Patenting chalk water solution is like patenting milk.
Oh look, I’ve made up a liquid consisting of suspended lipids, sugars, and proteins! Please detain these cows!
These corporations would try to patent any molecular arrangement that contains two oxygen atoms and call it a day and they’d fight a plant for it.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Well, dehydrogen-oxide has been proven to, in large enough quantities, be deadly to humans.
bernieecclestoned@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Well spotted