CARLY CASSELLA
31 AUG 2019
If all the hydro-power dams in the United States were removed and replaced with solar panels, it would take up a fraction of the land and produce substantially more electricity, according to a new analysis.
The idea is ambitious, and for now, it’s really just a thought experiment. Today, hydropower is a significant source of renewable energy in the US, accounting for roughly six percent of the country’s total electricity output.
Removing all 2,603 hydro dams in America would leave a huge energy void behind, but it could also provide room for greener opportunities.
While it’s true that hydropower dams are a renewable source of energy, they still produce large amounts of greenhouse gases and can be environmentally destructive and costly to maintain in the long term.
In recent years, these criticisms have led to a growing dam removal movement. And although it’s theoretical, a massive investment in solar power might be able to cushion that loss.
To cover for all the hydro dams currently in use, scientists estimate we would need nearly 530,000 hectares of photovoltaics (PV). While this sounds like a lot, it’s a “surprisingly modest” amount compared to the combined size of most reservoirs, which cover nearly 4 million hectares nationwide.
In fact, the new analysis suggests that substitute solar panels could match the total energy output from hydro dams while using just 13 percent of the same land.
“I think that’s pretty astonishing and tantalising too,” John Waldman, an aquatic conservation biologist from the City University of New York, told Carbon Brief.
“I’m hoping this presents a different mindset for people who think about our energy futures.”
The potential land sitting under reservoirs right now is immense, and if only 50 percent of that surface is drained and used for solar panels, it could greatly improve energy efficiency, producing nearly three-and-a-half times the amount of energy hydropower currently generates.
Even in a more conservative hypothetical, where only a quarter of that drained land is used for solar farms, Waldman and his colleagues calculate energy production could increase 1.7 fold.
In some states, this has the potential to free up huge swathes of land for other purposes, including wildlife habitat, recreation, and agriculture. In Florida, for instance, scientists calculated a solar farm the size of New York’s Central Park (341 hectares) could replace 26,520 hectares of the state’s hydro dams.
The new analysis focused on solar power because it is easily scalable, but the authors argue the same logic can also be applied to wind power on a reservoir’s surrounding ridges and hydrokinetic turbines in a newly-flowing river.
“Also, potentially expensive and difficult-to-permit electrical lines that transmitted the hydropower already exist at these locations and could potentially be repurposed to carry electricity from alternative sources,” the authors argue.
Published findings in Nature Sustainability here.
HT/ozspeaksup
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Clever! And I guess they will have pumped hydro storage for night time? Win -win all the way to subsidies.
THIS MORON KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT ENERGY OR ECONOMICS.
Your clue should have been,
I didn’t really think a [sarc] tag was necessary but YMMV.
Adding the tag would amount to sarcnado. So this moron left it off. But, hey, we’re not all sarc enabled.
At least he got that much right, though most ecowarriors don’t allow it to be called renewable niether do the renewable mandates.
… and you think 500,000 hectares of panels and associated electronics is going to be maintainance free? Hydro is probably about the lowest maintenance technology you can get.
and how much of that land is suitably oriented ( at least vaguely southerly exposure ) and not in a valley where it gets very short direct sunlight ? Hint: reservoirs are always in a valley, that is why they fill up with water !
“might be ” and “cushion” , that’s about as good as it is likely to get.
Sadly, I’m not feeling very tantalised at this point.
Agreed, Greg!
One key is this simple statement above:
Meaning that another delusional desk activist urbanite has assumed that total surface acreage of reservoirs are solar panel buildable acres…
Not that I’d be in favor of it, but why don’t they just leave the Hydro plant & all the water as is, producing clean power, and then put solar floating on the surface?
Bingo, commieBob! Right on the money.
And what are California and Nevada and Arizona going to do for water after we’ve drained Lake Mead….
Die. I think that’s the idea.
Touché!
Just take some endangered fish species and place some fry into the hydro-lakes. Conduct a study declaring the lakes to be a refuge for an endangered species and the lake remains.
And, what will be their source water supply to fight the fires caused by the Tesla installed Solar Panel explosions?
They’ll just let them burn and conveniently ignore those carbon emissions.
You know the usual.
Mike Ozanne
Yes, many, if not most of the dams, were built for flood control and to retain water for irrigation during the months it was needed. These days, they are also important for recreation ranging from fishing to water skiing. Energy production was and is a side benefit.
It strikes me that reducing the requirements to enter college, and inflating grades, to encourage larger attendance at what has become a major industry, has resulted in ‘academics’ who are severely logic impaired.
Exactly.
Hydropower dams do far more than make power.
They store water in wet years and release it for stream flow during dry years, thus providing flood control and ensuring water supply. This is the most basic function of dams even when not used for power. Each is a critical function that cannot simply be dispensed with, because entire cities, and states, and economies have come to depend on each of these.
But they do far more.
They create the ability for widespread reliable irrigation, which is simply not possible without the head pressure and storage provided by a dam.
The provide for the recreational and wildlife habitat opportunities of large bodies of fresh open water.
The power they provide is not intermittent, and as such is far more valuable than solar power.
It can reliably be used for base load power…something which is in no way possible with solar.
Not only is solar not suitable or base load demand, but every watt of solar capacity must be backed up by reserves, including spinning reserve capacity.
And the dams are already built, so any fossil fuels used to make them has already been expended. Once poured, (most types of) concrete actually absorbs CO2 over time.
And dams last a LONG time, an can be dredged when the reservoirs fill in, providing soil and fill material.
Some of it might be very valuable grades of topsoil.
Panels, as we know, also require a huge amount of fossil fuel usage to mine, transport, and refine the materials, and to manufacture the panels.
They are known to not last for a particularly long time.
Much of the land filled by reservoirs is canyon land, steep hillsides, and other places not suitable for solar installations, which generally use flat open land.
The examples of Florida dams seems especially misinformed and nonsensical: Most Florida dams are not installed with hydropower in mind, they are for flood control and water retention. Most dams in Florida are more properly described as locks.
I find it hard to believe this is a serious proposal from serious or knowledgeable people.
In fact it seems downright idiotic, considering how much more useful dams and especially hydroelectric power is than solar panels installations.
These people at Nature Sustainability may be the dumbest human beings ever born.
Absolutely, and many of these dams that are close to a city prevent further subdivision in the catchment which allows economical farmlands to operate close to a big city thus reducing transport costs and retaining rich fertile soils that would otherwise be built on.
They retain rich environmental and recreation areas close to cities, too.
They are a win/win/win.
From the sound of this article, one of the two hydro dams in Florida was about ready to fall apart, and provided very little power anyway.
https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2017/07/20/tallahassee-to-shut-down-one-of-two-hydroelectric-plants-in-florida-113512
But it’s probably not in a valley, so there’s that.
Where in FLorida did the find a place to put a hydroelectric dam?
Panhandle, near Tallahassee.
yeah that was my first thought reading this idiocy
people crops and animals need water
as a thought experiment?
it shows a staggering LACK of any thought at all.
science alert is full cli-fi retard mode, the rare decent item among the dross is harder to find
I think it might be a little smarter to put floating panels on part of Lake Mead.
It would reduce evaporation slightly, and there’s probably already some good-sized transmission lines nearby.
“Removing all 2,603 hydro dams in America would leave a huge energy void behind, but it could also provide room for greener opportunities.”
What can be greener than hydropower? What are they smoking? How can they claim it generates lots of greenhouse gases? How? Just because they say it does, does not make it so.
Oh, BTW, greenhouse gases do not exist, so emit all you want. It is thermodynamically and physically impossible for CO2 to heat anything, as it emits IR equivalent to -79 deg C and everything on the planet is hotter than that. This is why CO2 is a fantastic refrigerant, as it suck heat and emits at low temperature IR that HAS to be lost to space.
And of course this wouldn’t allow for charging battery back-up systems as the generated power from solar must be used as it is produced. And solar produces it’s nameplate rating from 10 – 3ish local time then drops off dramatically while hydro produces power 24/7/365 (so long as the generation inlet is still below the waterline). So 13% of land coverage supplies 100% of the power 22% of the time. Something just doesn’t add up!
Ha,
“If all the hydro-power dams in the United States were removed and replaced with solar panels, it would take up a fraction of the land and produce substantially more electricity, according to a new analysis.”
EXCEPT AT NIGHT !
Exactly! I keep telling people to look at the satellite temp record for the LS layer on the NASA site and observe how it’s falling as CO2 levels rise. CO2 and NO are the gasses primarily responsible for dumping excess heat from the planet to space by radiation. You will also find that statement on the NASA site. We should be making more noise about this.
Charles
I think that they are referring to methane. However, microbial decomposition of inundated vegetation probably produces CO2 as well.
OK, the reservoirs emit lots of methane – so does all the tundra in the arctic. Would the area covered by, and shielded from the sun, for the solar power installations emit zero methane? I think not but I doubt if their so called study gave it much thought.
And oh-by-the-way, Isn’t methane subject to the SAME physics rules of feedback that Lord Monckton so thoroughly debunked in his recent paper?
So by the same token we should divert the Mississippi to eliminate the Delta and drain the Okeefenokee, the Everglades and the Camargue, and fell the New Forest?
Planet endangering crisis after all…. no half measures…. except nuclear power… we can’t do that.
With their logic, we should drain all the lakes because they produce methane. Oh, and all the wet lands that they have been working so hard to preserve.
“CO2 …emits IR equivalent to -79 deg C” Where on earth does that # come from?
Probably from taking the IR frequency of the asymmetric O=C=O stretch in carbon dioxide and plugging into Planck’s Law.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_law
I had thought the temperature was somewhat higher, but my memory isn’t what it was and I am too lazy to repeat the calculation at the moment.
John Wadham Professor of Biology – freshwater fish. Still knows nothing about energy production or economics or flood control or anything to do with dams. Hydro is renewable after all.
How he even could jump from fresh water aquatics to solar power is a mystery …but it sounds more like something graduate students have cobbled up.
Spot on.
No brainier for the brainless, solar panel can be floated on the reservoir behind the hydro-dams.
You mean the ones that are in really rainy locations and have less than 50% usable sunlight days a year and would then also be down in valleys much of the time.
fun that you insulted yourself
But it could get in the way of the boating.
One could put solar panel on the wall of a dam. And if elevated, the solar panels could floated on reservoir and allow boating and maintenance to solar panels.
But solar panels are pretty ugly- so skip the whole idea.
I like idea floating platforms for nuclear power, nuclear power is only know way to reduce CO2 emissions.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to reduce CO2 emissions. We need more not less.
Floating panels makes sense. They would also block evaporation and save precious water.
water meet electricity…. what’s not too like?
Yea Joel, and submersible cables are cheap as dirt, and can be made to float to…so they d not have to go clear to the bottom and then back up…right Joel?
First joel.
The importance of water storage provided by dams and reservoirs is ignored.
Who will pay for the decommissioning of the dams and replace the lost impounded water? What source of water will be substituted for the water in the reservoirs? There is no consideration of the environmental consequences of draining the reservoirs and basically destroying the adjacent ecosystems if the solar farms were built.
Sure . That way the resulting storm caused toxic waste from shattered panels won’t be readily seen by the peons ….
The paper (by biologists?) does not contain the word “cloud”.
Or “night”
or ‘night’
Or backup
Or snow or dust or leaves or any other environmental materials that may find their way onto the solar panels that would degrade their efficiency.
It was a meme a short time ago that “The Onion” was closing shop because the onion could no longer generate sarcasm more ironic than reported news. Then there was Monty Python but the Python was at least funny and not pretending that solar can generate electricity generally less than one half day. (unless you get some lights to light them at night)
So I’m going; that we can burn witches at night to generate energy.
What do you burn, apart from witches; MORE witches.
“will have pumped hydro storage ”
If they had an electricity pump and some place to pump it to.
Why not build buoyant solar panels and flute them on reservoirs?
Then you could reduce evaporation at the same time.
Because the subsidy gravy train is ending ending.
So, the less efficient floating solar panels won’t be gaining any type of a foothold … no free money anymore.
A reservoir is not a generator. It is a battery. A solar panel is a generator like a turbine.
You need to replace like for like to yield a valid replacement.
A reservoir is not a generator. It is a battery. A solar panel is a generator like a turbine.
You need to replace like for like to yield a valid replacement.
Why would anyone in their right mind take this kind of nonsense seriously? This makes zero sense even if the IPCC was right about the size of the effect CO2 has on the surface temperature, which owing to a malfeasant conflict of interest, they couldn’t be more wrong about.
Even if such a solar panel worked, it would be a dystopian nightmare:
– “a solar farm the size of New York’s Central Park (341 hectares) could replace 26,520 hectares of the state’s hydro dams”? Not at night it couldn’t. Not during a New York snow storm it couldn’t.
– “costly to maintain in the long term”? – more costly to maintain than solar farms? daily washing as dust and bird crap collects on them? regular replacement of electrical infrastructure? Regular replacement of defunct solar panels?
– “produce large amounts of greenhouse gases” – I had to look up the link to discover that they mean “lakes produce methane.” Honestly? All life produces methane (e.g. bull **** like this article produces methane) so are they recommending that after we drain the water, we sterilize the land before installing the solar panels? And keep it sterilized? Should we drain all natural lakes for the same reason? Maybe destroy all life on Earth?
– plus a 341 hectare solar farm is harder to disguise as a natural lake.
– plus it’s way less fun to go fishing or water skiing on a 341 hectare solar farm.
I guess their dystopian vision of renewable energy is bleak sterile dry lake-beds populated with solar panels and surrounded by bleak sterile hills populated with windmills. Welcome to the new world.
Irrigation, navigation and cost don’t matter? Nor pollution from making so many PV cells in China?
Also, John, add in flood control. All hydroelectric dams are multi-purpose, and moderating floods and droughts is one of their functions. What idiots!
And recreation.
And irrigation.
I mentioned irrigation.
And many more fish in a far greater water area/volume than originally.
And birds, and deer & moose…
Who needs irrigation? It’s not like humanity is all of a sudden gonna be forced to start eating more plants than ever before. Oh, wait…
I have no words I can use in public to describe the stupidity of the author, scientists involved and anyone who believe this
I, for one, am rarly at a loss for words. Many of my reaction words seem to be on proscribed lists, so I will often quote Bugs Bunny when referencing the authors of this “study” and others of: “What a maroon!”.
It’s now official, the scientific community is completely stupid
This is NOT the scientific community. This is the self proclaimed “sciencey” commune.
Certainly no competent engineers involved.
“Certainly no competent engineers involved.”
Compentent – like Jacobson (sarc)
+!, assuming this idea originated or was considered by an actual scientist.
These are comic book scientists.
You can tell that by the white lab coats!
The people who wrote this garbage (not to mention whoever decided to publish it) make Professor Frink look like Lisa Simpson
Someone tell them to get back to their Flubber!
https://youtu.be/PVR3eOch1n0
So they want to take away our recreation as well. No more house boating. No more water skiing. No more swimming. Instead on our days off we can wash stupid solar panels.
We will be happy to do our part, comrade! Your tendency to put recreation above duty to the collective has been duly noted. You will be informed concerning the initiation date of your reeducation.
Yes, he has just dinged his Social Credit Score!
And no more water to drink too
Yes, San Francisco gets a substantial portion of its drinking water from Hetch Hetchy reservoir, and in more recent years, from newly built dams.
It is unfortunate, but water rationing is in effect because there are no more reservoirs.
No more irrigation water, no more flood control, no more freshwater lake fish habitat, no more serene views of shimmering water between hills. You can forget about the farms in CA’s Central Valley where 80% of the world’s almonds are grown, and vast quantities of walnuts, apricots and pistachios; also forget the massive apple orchards in Central Washington, the largest apple-producing region in the U.S.
It’s not like manmade reservoirs are barren areas; many are just as beautiful and biologically productive as natural lakes — even without counting the irrigation water that supplies adjacent areas.
We’re dealing with misanthropic ideologues here, straight out of Orwell’s Animal Farm: “Manmade BAD, natural GOOD,” regardless of measurable pros & cons. Greening of the desert? Not on your life, not if Gaia made it dry in the first place. And don’t think for a minute, Neo-Luddites will allow abandoned reservoirs to be carpeted with solar panels. They will insist upon restoring the pre-Columbian status quo ante of native vegetation.
Why is the water environment less important than dry or perhaps even arid land. I am sure fish frogs and waterfowl would disagree. A lake, either manmade or natural, has a very diverse and complicated biome. It is an integral part of the environment and once established should be entitled to equal protection.
“The study from Washington State University finds that methane, which is at least 34 times more potent than another greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, makes up 80% of the emissions from water storage reservoirs created by dams. ”
So, by this logic, we should drain all large bodies of water ? Where do the think the water will go ? Why would it suddenly stop emitting “ghg’s” if it were some where else and all of these “emissions” are currently included in global greenhouse gas inventories !
These people are insane..
Best laugh of the day…
I never realized that GH gas emissions from bodies of water were such a problem. Just drain the Great Lakes and all our methane emission problems are solved–goodbye global warming! And why are we worried about CO2 when there is all this methane and (gasp!) water vapor being “emitted” all over the place.
I see they calculated the percentage of total reservoir emissions attributable to methane, but stopped short of calculating a total amount? Or is it stuck in there somewhere?
BTW Mark, why not send all this drained water down disposal wells as frack process water?
“80% of the emissions”… but how much is that quantitatively? Probably most of my farts are methane too but i genrally don’t have much gas to speak of.
Solar panels make lousy flood-control devices, much less irrigation/drinking water retainers.
Sounds like something an academic would come up with. They probably think the land under lakes is flat too.
… or high enough to get sunlight for 12 hours a day.
How much power will those new solar panels provide at night ?
How much power do these dams current provide at night ?
Yeah that’s what I thought.
This is the most egregiously awful carbon trade ever. Of course, they never consider the carbon footprint of mining and converting, etc all of those panels. They grow on Chinese trees you know.
Yes, but the hydro-electric reservoirs act as batteries, backing up existing wind and solar farms when they are not producing. Grand Coulee is very key helping bolster wind and solar farms presently in the West Coast of the U.S.
Totally ignores the day/night problem. Dams run 24×7 when water is available. Dams also generate zero industrial waste, or close enough, once they are built.
Let me think about this one for a sec …. NO! Are they nuts (rhetorical question)? Replace 24×7 with intermittent? NO, no a thousand times no.
Here’s a really great idea. Let them pay for all those solar panels and pump water uphill to store the energy for when it is needed! What? Oh, gravity does that for us already? Never mind (homage to Gilda Radner).
I cannot be the first to think float the solar panels on the reservoirs and have the best of both?
That’s what the Chinese have done. Maybe no hydro, but definitely on a lake.
Crockett, not really either. Sitting there fishing at the bank of the dam while the Sun is rising, and the first people begin to enjoy water-skiing. The green _really_ want to destroy the last bit of nature and cultural habitats for man and beast.
Have you ever seen the effects of a windstorm/thunderstorm as it cross a large body of water, such as a large reservoir lake? Haven’t you heard that spreading thick ice when the surface of a fresh water lake freezes over can be sufficient to crush the hulls of boats?
Next.
That occurred to me, but it eliminates the recreation. Of course, so would draining.
The more I think about this, the more I’m convinced this is trolling.
Or keep them at land, that’d be cheaper.
“While it’s true that
-hydropower dams-solar panels are a renewable source of energy, they still produce large amounts of greenhouse gases and can be environmentally destructive and costly to maintain in the long term.”There, fixed it for you. David Middleton, please serve us a guest back-of-an-envelope. 🙂
Yes Hugs:
Add to this that these panels are specifically designed to heat the planet by reducing the Albedo and enhancing the solar absorption which is then converted into Heat/Energy. And they do it better than CO2.
It would require some pretty fancy mooring and cabling you know. There are storms and the level of reservoirs vary a great deal but the floats must not collide with each other irrespective of weather and lake level, and the cables must not chafe.
Float the panels was my first thought too. I also like the comment by icicil:
Sounds like something an academic would come up with. They probably think the land under lakes is flat too.
Kai
September 2, 2019 at 11:25 am
Exactly…they’ve provably never studied dam siting issues. Many would be in a valley where in addition to getting no sun at night (who would have thought!) they are also in the shade for much of the day.
Floating panels might work, but at what cost?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_solar
I think they hate reservoirs. Getting rid of the reservoirs is their main priority.
Indeed, they do. There was a book back in the 90’s called Cadillac Desert that railed against the dams. When Clinton was president there were serious proposals to remove the dams.
crockett: Best post of the thread!
Crockett, That’s the best way to do it, its maybe double the energy, with a constant source…
A floating solar farm would stop some of the reservoir evaporation as well…and cool the panels for max efficiencies. They are doing this at a tailings pond and water reservoir for a copper mine in Chile I was reading about using the floating solar PV electricity with their remote diesel generation. Now that actually makes total sense, and completely unsubsidized. Saves them some diesel fuel and curtails evaporation in a desert condition where water is very valuable.
If the solar could be incorporated into some pumped storage at the dam, then all the better. Or just timing the output of the solar with the dam generators and store the water for when needed. I am not opposed to solar if not subsidized or given priorities that cost other electricity producers, or bulldoze forest land or ag land for a solar farm. I am surprised there isn’t more floating solar farms.
Of course this proposal was to tear out the dams if they could. Guess we shouldn’t give them any idea’s or next we won’t be able to make use for recreation from our reservoirs.
Floating panels and recreational boating do not play well together, or with swimming either. And I really hate it when my fishing hook gets snagged on their wiring.
Another thing that floating panels would have to contend with is debris. Logs, dead fish and plastic bottles.
Most reservoirs that I have seen have barriers near the dam to prevent boats from being sucked into the turbine inlet. So, panels could be placed in the area that is already off limits to boats, maybe expanded a bit. But, the surface area will decrease as the water level drops, so unless it is OK to have panels draped over the sides, the width will have to be no greater than the width of the canyon at the lowest level anticipated for water in drought years.
My take is the solar panels, used judiciously, could make power generation more efficient at reservoirs sites, but it would be a serious mistake to blow the dams.
Submersible cable.is expensive and heavy.
It would have to hang to the bottom and come back up. That is a lot of cable.
Then there is the voltage drop. Are you gonna put electronics and transformers out there too?
Floats. Maintenance. Storms. Ice. Installation.
Mooring or anchoring. Drift. Variable water level.
Fouling. And for what?
This might be an exercise in how to make something already too expensive even more so.
Panels would also reduce evaporation, and the areas closest to the dams aren’t for recreation anyway. But I think most people would find panels uglier than open water.
You beat me to it, best of both worlds!
Can put some offshore windfarms in the middle, too!
Covering part of a lake with floating solar panels would seem to be a better solution than draining the lake. I imagine draining a lake would have a significant detrimental effect on all the living creatures around it.
Building new nuclear powerplants instead, would be a much better solution to our electricity needs.
CAGW has driven some people a little nutty and they are proposing nutty ideas like this “draining the lake” as a result.
About Carly Cassella: “…writing from Carly Cassella on Medium. I write about science, the environment and feminism…”
Are the greens going pink or mental. It appears to written by an 8 year old.
The solar panels need stabilizing backup, for example from hydro. – No, I give up, this is so stupid that I have difficulties to comment.
Never mind, of course, that the power from dams is reasonably reliable 24/7/365.
Dams aren’t just for power production – they’re more important in many places as flood control and irrigation water storage. California is still failing to learn this lesson.
Then, of course, there’s the whole idea of using dams as pumped storage for wind and solar generation.
“tantalizing” isn’t the word i’d use to describe this “idea”…
Ms. Carly Cassella obviously does not understand the difference between the “dispatchable” energy source, and attendant energy storage ability, represented by hydropower versus the daily-intermittent, non-dispatachable, no-stored-energy ability of solar PV.
And should I be surprised that both “Science Alert” and “Nature Sustainability” published this tripe?
“Tantalizing” idea??? . . . Pfffttttt!
Hydropower is available 24/7/365. Norway built its energy supply 100 years ago and have almost 100% of its electricity from hydropower. There are no coal or gas plants as backup.
The old dams are producing electricity at a cost of $0.006 pr kWh. But because of greedy politicians the added tax etc means that consumers have to pay $0.125
Let me guess. They are assuming that the solar cells are 100% efficient and operate 24 hours a day.
Sure! How will solar panels and windmills control floods and store water in addition to the hydro power? Then there are the recreational facilities, home sites and the economies that have grown up only because of the lakes. Oh yes, and no consideration for the fact that dispatchable hydro power would be replaced by non-dispatchable power.
Hard to believe that otherwise intelligent people (supposedly) put so much faith in solar and wind energy when it’s perfectly obvious to most human beings that the sun only shines about 1/2 of each day, and the wind comes and goes at will.
Sounds criminally insane to me.
This is utterly delusional. Hydro power is extremely reliable, very cheap and to a considerable degree storable and thus about as different and as much better than PV as anything can be.
The ironic thing is that the only way PV could ever replace conventional power is if it is combined with pumped hydro on a vast scale.
Which would require a second dam to store the “vast” amount of water needed to pump back uphill.
And how efficient is this process of pumping water back uphill?
IOW…what percent of power generated, and then used to pump water, winds up back in the grid when the water is released and used to regenerate power?
My guess is a small fraction of it.
And where are the places one could build a second water impoundment beneath a large dam?
If it is too close, it reduces the head of the first dam.
We have heard of pumped storage, but little on the particulars.
And I would not rely on advocates for honest info…we see the sort of BS they foist.
Pumped water storage for energy production is an ECONOMIC phenomenon that uses as much energy as is produced. Water is released and energy produced at the time of day when electricity prices are highest, maximizing revenue. Water is pumped back into storage at times when electricity costs are the lowest (middle of the night). Using the most expensive form of energy production (solar) to pump water into storage defeats the whole economic purpose. Idiocy.
“Using the most expensive form of energy production (solar) to pump water into storage defeats the whole economic purpose. Idiocy.”
You’re confusing operating vs. capital costs. Solar has ZERO fuel cost, monocrystalline silicon has an up to 0.5% annual production decline that will happen regardless of whether the power is sold or curtailed.
So the point at which it makes economic sense to shut down is a selling price of zero to slightly negative.
Obviously it wouldn’t make sense to always run at a price of zero, and becauae of varying demand and weather they don’t. And I’m ignoring the market-distorting evil of subsidies, which should neither be offered to solar installers or Saudi princes or LNG terminals.
The idea of destroying one perfectly good method of energy production and replacing it with another expensive, unreliable method is mindblowingly stupid. It’s like “cash for clunkers” on steroids. Here’s a thought experiment: replace any decreased electric generation from loss of dams, which are probably old and relatively small and thus inefficient, with modern coal-fired, or (if available) gas-fired plants. Problem solved.
“The idea of destroying one perfectly good method of energy production and replacing it with another expensive, unreliable method is mindblowingly stupid.”
true – but it is also an excellent gauge of most greens intellectual capacity / critical thinking skills