Roger Andrews reviews the ins and outs of using the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead as a giant pumped hydro storage scheme aimed at fixing California’s man-made grid reliability problems.
Roger Andrews reviews the ins and outs of using the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead as a giant pumped hydro storage scheme aimed at fixing California’s man-made grid reliability problems.
whatamatterforyou… pump right at the bottom of the dam into the lake
– And best of all, when the wind ain’t blowing and the sun ain’t shining, you can use power from the dam to run the pumps instead! “See? – all the water pouring out of those pipes back into the dam? – we’re “doing something” here, to SAVE THE EARTH!”
{ – from a guy whose favourite island in Lake Ontario flunked its wind tests – not enough wind on the island to build wind turbines – and they’re building them anyways. Virtue signalling, anybody?}
If California has money to spend on low speed rail to nowhere, they can afford to build their own pumping plants.
Just shut down Las Vegas and divert all power to California…..Recycling bypass water is just more bypass…Pump back at the source (Bolder) would accomplish the same results if Lake Mead has capacity….If they don’t the process is just a plug holding water
Screw California,,, let them flush the streets with wine….They are already sucking the Colorado dry & they have more than enough Oil resources that could fuel power generation.. The greedy bastards screwed themselves by selling ENRON to much power, and then had to buy back their own power at 10X ….Such are the stupid
We don’t get our power in LV from Hoover Dam. Other than Boulder City, all the power goes to Los Angeles. We do get our water from Lake Mead, though
The only answer they ever come up with, is “How can we spend more, less effectively, faster?”.
The mantra of the political animal.
I think this is more about the division of Water for California (They get more than they are allowed NOW) & the State Split sharing above & below Bolder… The sooner that the Corrupt 9th circuit is eliminated, & a New 12th circuit breaks that control, the better
There are very few negative fates that could befall CA and its stupid leftist-loving citizens that
are undeserved.
BCer
Has there ever been a bigger collection of stupid people with too much money ever assembled than in California? Maybe the idiots in Rome that hired Germans to run their army?
And then there’s the story within the story…..”However, neither reservoir has ever been more than 90% full and the average for both is around 65% full. Combined with the low capacity factors shown in Table 1, this suggests that the dams are overdesigned relative to water availability.” Some would tell the sheeple that Lake Meade is drying up due to “global warming”….”look how high the water level used to be!”…. Frack the Bozos!
This is just another sad story from the land of green theocracy where sanctified unreliable energy sources are the tail wagging the dog of reliable base load sources. It’s all moot as the same green theocracy would kill any development of this scale by employing the Endangered Species Act. In the time that proponents came up with actual plans to start the futile application “process”, China would have designed and built more reliable Coal-fired capacity than the entire Colorado system. Jerry Brown-out needs to stay in office long enough to reap what he has resown.
You mean the friend of reverend Jim Jones Jerry Brown?
California has exactly the government that they deserve. If Trump let’s California and NY sink the USA, well, that is on him.
Doubtful. My guess is that if he has to Trump will be happy to remove the governments of California and New York, replace them with good men whose first and last loyalty is to Americans, and give them the tools they need to imprison or deport anybody standing in the way of making America great again.
Negotiating water rights between multiple jurisdictions and parties will be a nightmare (states, businesses, farmers, counties, towns). Then you’ll have the NIMBYs and eco-activists. Add in the EPA and every other state and federal department full of ambitious bureaucrats. Lawyers suing people and filing injuctions will make out like bandits for decades.
We’ll be sending people to live on Mars before a single shovel full of dirt is moved on this project. I suspect it’s more about giving green energy proponents false hope and delaying the inevitable reality that large scale wind and solar energy (80 – 90%) is a pipe dream
For what this is worth,
on PBS not long ago they had a documentary on energy, and they mentioned the USA has the largest reserve of coal in the world.
greenies/liberals will let that rot in the ground? really?
they are insane.
it is like sitting on a life boat in the middle of the ocean, jumping in the water to swim instead of staying in the boat.
if we let them liberals will destroy western civilization, if it can save one fish or one turtle or one flower they will do it, oh yes they will, they will destroy western civlization.
In first sentence: “to help store California’s excess solar and wind generation ”
First of all, what is the shape of this ‘excess’? I suspect it comes in short intervals here and there as the wind blows at off peak hours and the sun shines brightly in mid day. Imagine a variable power supply like that driving pumps that need to run at a constant optimum speed to be effective.
Secondly, what is the expected return of stored power? Would they get back 60% of the power used to do the pumping? More, or less? (I don’t know, have not seen any data on pumped storage)
Finally, how much will this cost to operate and how much will it return in revenue from the pumped storage?