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Comment by icyfox | Hacker News Reader

A small - and somewhat related - anecdote.

New Zealand had to build an aluminum plant in the 1960s and figured out it would be more efficient to bore miles underground, build turbines, install a huge power station, and wire it tens of miles to the smelting plant. It relies on a vertical drop between Lake Manapōuri and the open ocean to create the gravitational potential to turn the turbines. When the smelting station doesn't use the full capacity the power station has to immediately reduce output, otherwise it can overload the transmission lines to the rest of the grid.

Manapouri Power Station is the name if anyone is interested in reading more. It has an interesting history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manapouri_Power_Station

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A slight aside, Tiwai is now now owned by Rio Tinto. Every few years Rio Tinto claims the power is too expensive and they may have to closed down. Then they get a discount and carry on.

They are at it now. That place closing down would lose 1000+ jobs if n a region that doesn’t have a ton of options, the world would lose a greenish supply of aluminium and I would potentially get a discount on my power bill when I stop subsidising that massive company (that smelter uses a bit over 10% of NZs electricity).

Oh, and Rio Tinto have dumped toxic waste in various places too.

https://www.powercompare.co.nz/n/tiwai-point-aluminium-closu...

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/468066/tiwai-point-toxic...

Rio Tinto is always extorting the Québec government for preferential rates on power to make aluminum. I don't understand why governments let companies hardball them like that. The c-suite and the trademarks can leave, the factory, the expertise and the market will still mostly be there, governments could invest and rebuild something they/the people actually have ownership of.

I don't understand why governments let companies hardball them like that

Moral hazard [1]. Government officials make these decisions because they can win political points by doing so. Usually, they get to take credit for being “job creators.” Opposition politicians who try to raise the issue of risks, potential debts, environmental degradation, etc. can be quickly branded as anti-jobs and their valid criticisms dismissed.

Down the road, when the chickens come home to roost, the politicians who approved the deal are nowhere to be found. Since there’s no law allowing the public to hold those politicians financially accountable for their past decisions the effect of moral hazard has run its full course, leaving the public holding the bag.

As for why (even new generations of) politicians would continue to cave to these companies’ demands: no one wants to be left taking the blame for job losses.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

Why would you hold elected officials “financially accountable” for doing what the voters want?

If they actually throttle them during peak usage aluminum plants should get a discount. Because much of the electrical part is more or less the equivalent of charging a shitty battery, it can be throttled really easily and being able to eat up extra capacity during low electrical usage is really environmentally friendly, as is aluminum as a material for making stuff being infinitely recyclable.

> If they actually throttle them during peak usage aluminum plants should get a discount.

Why? They could build their own power source.

That said, I’d like a discount when my internet line speed drops below advertised due to everyone else using the internet.

Efficient use of capital and resources. Idle power plants waste resources and make things more expensive.

Consider every dollar spent as an interest baring loan. Spending money on a power plant not used wastes it and making everything more expensive.

Scalable loads makes the return on investment for variable load renewables and constant load nuclear much better. The most expensive power are the peaker plants that have to run only a handful of hours per day.

More scalable grid connected loads like aluminum processing makes building capacity and especially renewable capacity cheaper.

In the example here, the power plant was made to supply the smelter. The taxpayer built the plant for the smelter and now Rio Tinto are dictating the power price.

The power plant can’t easily supply the National grid, as the lines aren’t there with sufficient capacity. The lines are being built but Rio Tinto have used these facts to get to a position where they are subsidised by the rest of the country.

The power plant also has a finite life, and it’s passed its midpoint.

Additionally, that smelter has also had government subsidies to stay open. I see no great loss in letting it die.

Oh Cool, there's a very similar setup in northern BC. The Nechako reservoir drains through tunnels drilled under the Coast Range and generates powers in Kemano. Most of the power goes to a smelter in Kitimat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemano

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenney_Dam

Thank you for sharing, I grew up next to a hydroelectric dam and the time I spent on top of it for general tours and special tours with our scout group is something I will always remember.

My brain however has in the past created incredible nightmares based on the scale of what I experienced there. I just _had_ to see what the tailrace output looked like and was not disappointed by this nightmare fuel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlhSzs4JXE0

Why is the video nightmare fuel? I have zero context, but I assume it's nightmare fuel because they could suddenly let out a crap-load of water through there and you'd get smashed to smitherines?

Yeah basically. I guess it’s mostly me on personal nightmare fuel… The turbine output chute of the dam I grew up with was so rapid and voluminous that standing next to it was like being caught in a tsunami and the white water extended hundreds of meters from the dam. I spent a lot of time in the river in boats and jetskis and there were a number of signs and buoys ominously warning of certain death.

The scale of it all was quite terrifying to my young mind as I imagined all the unseeable hazards beneath the water’s surface, on which it capitalized during my sleeping moments.

I bet you're a big fan of low head dams :-)

X( These are pretty abundant in the Jordan River (for feeding canals in Utah where I live now) and have sadly claimed a number of lives. Indeed, I do not like them at all.

Many years ago, before I was twenty, I hitched a ride on a pearling boat with a sea kayak to shoot the horizontal falls in the Kimberley (Western Australia) which was then (~1980) unvisited and well off even the remote adventure tourism tracks although much better known now [1][2].

It remains today as both one of the most exhilarating and the stupidist things I've done.

Equatorial tide changes through a narrow gorge are insane enough before adding in salt water crocodiles on one side and sharks on the other (well, both on both sides to be honest).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dIhCmo3g0c

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xYg73DV0V0

That video is from James Hamilton. He does cool stuff at Amazon and has a very nice boat. Occasionally blogs.

https://mvdirona.com/jrh/Work/index.html

Woa cool! I'm really glad there are other nerds out there wanting to know the same things as me (and having the stones to do it). I'm glad he got out alive.

Discharging >40% of the freshwater usage in a country to the open ocean is not a 'small' anecdote.

Instead of discharging into the ocean, could it be used for drinking water?

That was proposed but rejected by the government.

It looks to be a fairly long ways from major cities, is that why?

That is correct. It's located in one of the most remote areas of New Zealand, and a very long way from cities with a decent population.

Can't do that and generate power. You'd spent all (or at least a lot) of the generated energy pumping the water where it needs to go.

It's a large amount of water but the anecdote itself is only ~32cm² on my screen :)

> the anecdote itself is only ~32cm² on my screen

This comment reminded me of a cute tool I used to have installed back in the WinXP days called "Screen Calipers". It was a super sweet tool. 100% skeumorphic :D

http://www.iconico.com/caliper/

What percentage of a non-negligible amount of fresh water pumped/dumped into the ocean is returned to the freshwater ecosystem/loop given, say, 10 years?

Plenty of places can do this with essentially zero environmental impact. If it rains a lot and the rain came from ocean evaporation and the natural water route was a big river quickly back to the ocean, you can pretty harmlessly divert a portion through hydroelectric.

Not everywhere is the American west where it doesn’t rain a lot and water sources are being used way past their capacity.

The lake is in a reasonably remote part of the country, in an area with exceptional high rainfall. Plenty of other sources of water. Most of that fresh water was going to flow out into the ocean anyway, this just sends it via a more direct route.

The longer route (which actually flows next to the farm my mum grew up on) doesn't even go near a major population centre. The largest town (Tuatapere) has a population of 500 people.

Iceland did something similar in the highlands in 2002-2008, for an Alcoa smelter.

Several dams in the highlands create multiple reservoirs, the water is then fed through kilometres of tunnels before it reaches a ~400m vertical penstock to the Fljótsdalur underground power station (the power station is about 40km / 25mi inland, while the smelter is on the coast)

This is why you’ll often find bauxite smelters next to mountains - this is a common solution for the vast amounts of energy required.

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