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trailee@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Unclear if you’re misinformed or disingenuous.

Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption. That’s known as pumped hydroelectric energy storage, and it requires having paired reservoirs in close geographic proximity with a substantial elevation difference. It’s not an ideal technology for several reasons, but it’s the largest type of grid-scale storage currently deployed. Fundamentally it’s gravitational potential energy storage using water as the transport medium.

A higher-efficiency but not yet fully proven technology also uses gravity and elevation differences, but relies on train rails and massive cars. Here’s one company leading the charge, as it were.

Nuclear isn’t a good option to balance out the variability of wind and solar because it’s slow to ramp up and down. Nuclear is much better suited to baseline generation.

There are plenty of other wacky energy suave ideas out there, such as pumping compressed air into depleted natural gas mines, and letting it drive turbines on its way back out. That might also be riddled with problems, but it’s disingenuous to claim that chemical energy storage is the only (non-) option and therefore increasing wind and solar necessarily also increase fossil fuel scaling.

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humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption

All hydro is automatically “time shifting storage” when new solar is added to power the daytime. Just turn on the turbines at evening peak full blast, and at night. Average global capacity factor of hydro is 45% because the water reservoir is not sufficient to go full blast 24/7/365. Obviously, hydro time shifting is also highly complementary to wind.

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- trailee@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Hoover dam’s water release schedule is driven by requests from water rightsholders further downstream. Power generation is great, but the dam’s primary design purpose has always been facilitating agricultural irrigation.
  
  That said, I bet you’re right that the water flow rate could be varied throughout each day to help balance electric grid needs. I assume that will likely come into play as we get further along the path to intermittent green power generation.
  
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  - humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Flooding levels updam is a concern (but not for Hoover) in general. Yes, daily/weekly flow rate downstream is also a concern. But not hourly flow rate.
    
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PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Again, i’m talking energy density. All those other wacky ideas aren’t viable at all. Yes I know that the hoover dam is for generation, but the idea of pumped reserve power is literally identical to hydroelectric generation. The only difference is we would have a man-made solar/wind powered pump fill the resevoir, instead a natural source of solar power fill the resevoir. Either way, it’s a huge amount of land use for it to be considered “green.”

Additionally I never claimed nuclear power should be used as a peak generation, it should 100% used for baseload replacing all of our fossil fuel reactors, with huge taxes being applied to carbon generators.

As an aside:

A higher-efficiency but not yet fully proven technology also uses gravity and elevation differences, but relies on train rails and massive cars. Here’s one company leading the charge, as it were.

This idea is trash and as far as I can tell the hypothetical existence of this is an oil industry fud campaign. The only viable version of this is pumped hydro, which has the land use problem I’ve already described.

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- trailee@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Pumped hydroelectric storage obviously works with the same kind of turbines as dams located on rivers, but the land use is far from “literally identical”. For one, I agree with you that damming rivers is generally a bad thing. Large dam sites are chosen to min-max construction effort and reservoir capacity, and usually double as flood control. A grid storage project only needs to hold enough water for its daily power use, and it doesn’t need to be located directly on a water course. That’s not to say that there are unlimited suitable sites, but it’s more flexible.
  
  Pumped hydro storage is quite green in its lack of carbon emissions and ability to time-shift green generation capacity to match grid demand timing. Land use is a consideration, but large anything requires land. You haven’t actually attacked the weakest part of pumped hydro, which is that there just aren’t very many geographically suitable locations for it.
  
  You’ve also neglected to acknowledge the pesky spent nuclear fuel storage problem, which is unsolved and distinctly not eco-friendly. There are potentially better paths available such as the thorium fuel cycle, but they all either have no economic traction or are actively opposed by various governments (which don’t have any good solutions for existing spent fuel).
  
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  - PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The solution to nuclear waste is recycling it, which was something France has done quite successfully. The US can’t do it because of cold-war era treaties, but realistically it’s because Nuclear power is the only thing that can threaten fossil fuel primacy in our society and obviously there are trillions of dollars in the fossil fuel status quo.
    As an aside, the aftermath of Chernobyl shows exactly how eco-friendly massive radiation events are, Prypiat is a lush nature reserve now. Human activity is much worse for any given area then radiation is.
    
    Non recycled radioactive waste could be incinerated like we do with Coal and no one seems to be upset about it. /s
    
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    trailee@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    nuclear power is the only thing that can threaten fossil fuel primacy
    
    Solar and wind are cheap and easy to build now, and a huge threat to fossil fuel primacy, which in turn makes them a threat to the dominance of the petrodollar as the world’s reserve currency. That’s why the Trump administration has gone all-out to quash their momentum.
    
    Spent nuclear fuel reprocessing is theoretically possible but not politically or economically viable at present. Neither is 100,000+ year storage that has been the concept of a plan of record in the US for decades. I’m not saying that nuclear is inherently unworkable, but your net viewpoint doesn’t seem to be based in reality.
    
    The disaster response in Chernobyl was absolutely heroic but also incredibly lucky. If the melted core had reached the water underneath the concrete pad, the steam explosion would have spread the core atmospherically with devastating results. You’re making light of the disaster that was, and ignoring how close it came to being so much larger. Furthermore, the enormous irresponsibility of the Russian military’s damage to the sarcophagus cannot be overstated. If maintaining isolation for a few decades is difficult, there’s just no chance over 100,000+ years.
    
    But I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith, so I’m done here. I hope you can find your way to more nuanced views in the future.
    
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