Hacker News Reader

Have you ever been to Texas? 'one dam' doesn't even begin to describe the place. If you're at a body of water, look around. There's a dam. All lakes are artificial with the exception of Lake Caddo.

Lake Travis already has a power plant and is rarely every full for example. No one is going to start using pumped hydro there because there is no extra water to pump.

View on HN

To add to this TX and the SW USA are currently (been 20 years now) experiencing an extended drought. Water levels are at an all time low; many lakes are almost dry; and even the aquifers are getting a bit frumpy. As sidewndr46 said, ain't no water to pump.

Very briefly visited, (I'm an Aussie) I saw lakes and dams; but I never really had a look to see if there was a good spot to build a pipe between or to create a new lake.

You don't actually need an excess of water, you need to be able to move enough between lakes though. You are not using any extra water from the system by adding pumps.

That's the real determining factor right, places with cheap big pumped hydro projects ideally already have big dams that are not full, so from that point it works. But then you need a reasonable amount of elevation between reasonably close lakes (or ideal new spots).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com