Why can't anywhere that has significant elevation should just pumped storage of water during the day and use hydro on the way back down?
For grid storage second hand batteries might be fine. If taking them out of a scrapped car is feasible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqlOlqK_ot8
2nd life use cases for cheap, mass produced batteries like this are more common than you think.
The first location I looked at (link is not working :(), it relies on building two dams on rivers (which is something we tend to do less not more) and would flood some houses ...
And there is supposedly a price estimate, but it's just an A, B, C, D or E ranking could not find some costs to make comparison with battery storage for example.
- Removed EV subsidy
- Scrapped Lake Onslow seasonal pumped hydro storage
- Removed generational smoking ban (made it to 18yo like most countries)
- Gave 50% discount to heated tobacco products (aka IQOS)
- Gave a tip whose projects will be fast tracked
- Reduced housing insulation minimums
- Terminated new inter-island ferry project to replace aging ferries (tbh this one was getting out of proportion)
- Reintroduced tax interest write-off for landlords who rent their houses
- Removed free school launches for poorest country schools
Their goal was to end government spending, but giving $2b+ to countries richest people seems opposite.
And to give them credit here's couple of good things that will definitely help property market:
- Ability to import abroad-certified building supplies (atm there's a building supply monomopoly)
- Ability to build up 60sqm backyard homes without consent
- Densification plans
Bear lake Idaho has been talking about putting in pumped storage since the 2000s. On paper, it's pretty much the perfect geography for it. However, various concerns from the impact on local fishing to the impacts on the lakebed have ground that process to a halt. It's a 20+ year project that's gone nowhere.
That's why I'm largely negative on pumped hydro. On paper it seems nice, in practice it's almost impossible to get off the ground. Batteries, on the other hand, take almost no effort to install.
Yup. It might be possible to overbuild solar/wind to solve the problem (just need enough juice to offset the night). Won't be possible with current chemistries to have enough power to cover cloudy days or snow-covered solar panels.
> it seems while folks have been gnashing teeth on how expensive they are
This to me seems like a fixed perception based on outdated information. Batteries were quite expensive and required loads of rare earth/horrible chemicals to produce... 30 years ago when NiCd was fairly prominent. Now they are dirt cheap and due to get even cheaper with sodium ion coming to market. We are already manufacturing TWh of batteries yearly. Enough that we could theoretically have a full day backup everywhere in 10 to 20 years without any growth in manufacturing capacity.