Alternative Alshmertative

The Myth of Alternative Power and Hydroelectric Storage

“ Every time I get into a debate about “alternative” energy I point out it can’t be used for baseline power because it can’t provide reliable power, and it can’t provide reliable power because you can’t store the electricity that it episodically generates. Immediately, someone will say, “We can use hydraulic storage!” ”

“ Hydraulic storage is basically a hydroelectric dam on a small or large scale, except instead of using water brought by a watershed, the water is pumped up behind the dam with pumps powered by the generator whose energy output you want to store. For example, you would have electric pumps powered by solar panels or wind turbines, the idea being that when the wind or cloud-free days produced a surplus of power (or you built in surplus capacity) the pumps would pump water from a lower reservoir uphill into a higher storage reservoir. The electricity would be stored as the potential energy in the elevated water. When you needed the power back, you would drain the water back downhill through turbines just like a hydroelectric damn. Now, this certainly works and it has been done on a small scale. However, it will never, ever be a real-world, large-scale solution that can make alternative power work. Why? Well, let’s just do some back-of-the-envelope calculations.[Chicago Boyz Shannon Love continued] ”