Abaco, do you live by Oroville Wa or somewhere else?

I didn't catch if the article mentioned it but one of the key components of the math on this is the simple change in energy cost rate when the pumping back uphill is supposed to occur. Often it's late at night. I similar operation exists at the forebay at Oroville.

The future of power is a smart grid with intelligent, 2-way communicating, microinverters connected to distributed PV generation, in conjunction with distributed storage also with smart microinverters. See Hawaii as the most advanced test bed on this. Good stuff.

True, seem these would be easy to secure, if it was all hidden underground. It is just the temporary nature of it that is the big issue, if you had several, and used wind or solar to recharge for free, then that would make a little more sense.

TVA does the same:::

http://www.tva.gov/sites/raccoonmt.htm

-- j
.

No offense taken by $5Au. The State Science Institute might very well fund it.

fivedollargold needs a government grant..bet you could make that work in a couple of billion dollars. That idea seems either like something DARPA would have or a democrap..no offense meant to you, of course.

Yep, seems like something to consider.

A regional power company in Michigan built something along those lines in the 1960s near Ludington on Michigan's West Coast. It's been a great success, storing excess power on off-peak times and recovering substantial supplemental energy during peak periods. https://www.consumersenergy.com/conte...

Pumps are way more than 30% efficient! Where do you get that number?

Low speed water pumps have efficiencies on the order of >80%. Even ship propellers with poor inflow and compromised blade designs are 65%. Losses in the fluid circuit will add to the total cycle, but nothing like 70% losses.

http://www.pumpsandsystems.com/topics...

Japan has facilities like this too. It is a very effective means of energy storage. If the water source is really an issue, use seawater. There is no shortage of that.

Compressed air also works, but is less efficient round-trip.

Fivedollargold suggests that excess energy be utilized to lift racks of gold bullion. When needed, this kinetic energy would be released to drive a magnetized piston into a chamber with the same polarity at the bottom. Carbon dioxide gas injected into this chamber would be compressed at high temperature and turned to coal which can be used to produce electricity. The burning of the coal returns the carbon to the atmosphere, where it is recycled.

Power generation can be efficiently done in volume. A desert covered in solar cells is a great idea, but then dependent on the sun, which by the way seems to rise on the horizon almost every day even here in the Northwest. I still feel that tidal action is one of the most reliable energy sources we have. If we could leave the natural rivers alone and just dig some gigantic new ones (or how about using San Francisco Bay?) that should make the green people happy. Generators could generate power as the tide rises filling an artificial river (or S.F. Bay), and generate power as the tides goes out. Energy storage could be achieved by using some of this power to pump water into higher reservoirs. As far as storing water in caves, might it not be stored under compression of air or gas and released like as in somewhat similar squirt gun technology? History of the Edison's just show us that many things just need to be reinvented. Have our current scientist gained sufficient knowledge from the Einstein's, Edison's, Westinghouse's, Tesla's, Hawking's,
Oppenheimer's, Rutherford's, etc. to expand on what they have already discovered, to get us energy independent and practically free around the world? How long will this take? What new things will we fight about after we're there? If scientific history was studied as bad as political history and history of mans wars, we might still be living in caves.

Pumping water is in general, very inefficient. Pumps have an overall efficiency of about 30%, and the flow losses in the piping systems further reduce the system efficiency. Then after the water is pumped from a low reservoir to a high reservoir, evaporation steals some of the energy you have stored.

In the Nuclear Power world, they have a capability called Load Follow. There is more, but this is just a pointed counterargument.

"...or even terrorism if properly secure" you could say that about any power plant/energy storage.

Indeed, I was thinking that too, in all events, you still need one above the other and pumping, all it is is stored energy being transformed from electric to kinetic. It is still a loss inducing process, but at least they use the most affordable to lose.

Snezzy, remember, they are reporting the basics to the unwashed masses, I believe, with you being here, you are clean....

Losses in the motors, pumps, and generators might lead to other solutions.

I don't really think you are the intended audience!
:-)

Most of these restrictions are on new production. Back when Obama was running for POTUS the first time virtually nobody picked on a critical word in his "necessarily more expensive" coal speech - "new". It isn't about negatively impacting large corporations which can easily manage the minimal application to existing infrastructure and also work to reduce the re-model applicability. It is and was about limiting the market to those already dominating it.

Limiting the amount of new plants and making it more expensive for new companies to get into the industry are generally financially positive effects for those already dominating the industry. Soros undoubtedly knows this.

And that is before taking into account a variant of "too big to fail". If the new restrictions were to be leveraged against the big players (now "stronger" an more politically powerful thanks to keeping competition out) in coal there would undoubtedly be government subsidies to help transition to the new standards instead of outright plant shutdowns.

Crony capitalism: not just for Republicans.

On the other hand, if there was one industry which, if it shrugged, truly could stop the engine of the world - or at least of America - it would be coal. Imagine: "In order to meet the increasingly draconian restrictions, we're just going to shut down power plants until we hit those levels. In fact, because we care so much, we'll just shut them all down. We hear there are some nice wind and solar farm to west, enjoy your 'clean energy'"

Now how does the economy look?

Old idea. PECO does that here in Pennsylvania on the Susquehanna river. When the electricity from the hydro dam isn't needed on the grid it is used to pump water up to a higher reservoir where the energy is then recovered when needed.

Not sure how you could use deep mines or caverns. It relies on gravity to work.

Am I the only one to complain about LA Times saying "power" where they mean "energy"? I don't think one can store power.

Oh, the tribulations of a degree in physics!

OK....so where do you find this Cavern...at high elevation to generate the water power? The location has to be at a higher elevation so the water can fall [down a pipe] and turn a turbine. I studied Micro Hydro electric power 35 years ago in college. Typically they use non peak electricity [often nuclear as you really can't turn the plant down to a lower setting] to pump water to a high elevation storage pond and release it to a high head turbine when there is peak demand. The challenge is to find the correct location. The bigger the elevation change the less water has to be pumped and the smaller the storage has to be.

Wold seem to make sense, even as an emergency source as well, self contained and not subject to variables or even terrorism if properly secure.

Indeed, a good idea that seems unrutilized. For Soros, one would need to know why did he just do that when the EPA and Obamanation just announced their big restrictions on emmissions? That would seem counter intuitive unless there is a connection not known, which maybe would finally prove their collusion together (which we all have seen go on for years). Soros is as bad as any other manipulator in this system, despite the lefts love of his "altruism".