In hopes of further education:
“Taking into account evaporation losses from the exposed water surface and conversion losses, approximately 70% to 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained. The technique is currently the most cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy on an operating basis, but capital costs and the presence of appropriate geography are critical decision factors.”

There you go - you were only off by a factor of what??? 80X....... 8000%. Close, but no cigar!

Doesn’t add much cred to your rantings. Why not just say “Hey, that is a cool way to store electric”.....nah, that would be a positive and progressive opinion........

Read more....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

Webmaster - 24 April 2008 05:18 PM

In hopes of further education:
“Taking into account evaporation losses from the exposed water surface and conversion losses, approximately 70% to 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained. The technique is currently the most cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy on an operating basis, but capital costs and the presence of appropriate geography are critical decision factors.”

There you go - you were only off by a factor of what??? 80X....... 8000%. Close, but no cigar!

Doesn’t add much cred to your rantings. Why not just say “Hey, that is a cool way to store electric”.....nah, that would be a positive and progressive opinion........

Read more....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

And, as stated, that ignores the system efficiency losses.

It’s like the pump heating contractors that sell equipment based upon AFUE.

I can sell you an 87% AFUE boiler that’s three times the size you need for your building.  When that burner lights, it will run at 87% efficiency.

Of course, being oversized like that, it will waste hundreds of gallons of fuel every year.  But the sticker says “87%,” so it must be a good deal, right?

If we’re talking about environment and pollution, the total efficiency is the critical number, not the efficiency of any one individual component.

Selling things based upon an efficiency number that ignores the total system is dishonest.  I would never even dream of doing something like that to my customers, and you shouldn’t be doing it here, Craig.

Pumped storage like that is a cool way to store electricity, but that doesn’t make it a good companion to PV.  Ferraris are a cool way to travel, but that doesn’t make them a good way for me to deliver a heating system.  Being cool doesn’t make something a good idea.

(By the way, I do know a thing or two about pumped storage, as I’ve toyed with the notion of using it as a way to store power for my house.  I don’t imagine that it is efficient, but rather that it may be more cost-effective than lead-acid batteries.  It’s certainly not more efficient than a nuclear plant, by any stretch of the imagination.)

Joe

BrownianHeatingTech - 24 April 2008 09:57 AM

BeGreen - 24 April 2008 09:52 AM

AFAIK, the French nuclear waste problem is not solved, it has been deferred, much like ours. At this point they haven’t figured out how or where they will be storing vitrified waste for millenia. It is not a trivial or inexpensive problem.  Their first storage project, much like Hanford, WA, was short term and turned out to be leaky. The latest state of the art, holding area is also proving to be flawed. In the meantime they have a growing ground water radiation contamination in the Champagne region that is at threatening levels.

I expect you’re very correct.  That’s what happens when the government gets involved - you have a $10,000 toilet seat that wears out in two weeks.

There are three ways to do things… the right way, the wrong way, and the government way.

While the lifespan of this waste is long in human terms, it’s not particularly long in geological terms.  Drill a really deep mineshaft in a geologically-stable area, and things will be stable for far longer than it takes the waste to decay to safe levels.

Or, as others have mentioned, use a deep-ocean subduction zone.

Joe

This is a serious oversimplification of the issues involved. If it was as simple as digging a deep hole in the ground (mineshaft) and filling it with spent nuclear material certainly this would have been done a long time ago. The problem is, that is not a good solution. I’m not a nuclear scientist, but from what I have read, putting thousands of tons of nuclear material together creates massive heat which is a major concern with nuclear waste storage. Believe me, if this was an easy problem the French and Japanese would have tried the suggested solutions a long time ago.

BeGreen - 24 April 2008 11:29 PM

This is a serious oversimplification of the issues involved. If it was as simple as digging a deep hole in the ground (mineshaft) and filling it with spent nuclear material certainly this would have been done a long time ago. The problem is, that is not a good solution. I’m not a nuclear scientist, but from what I have read, putting thousands of tons of nuclear material together creates massive heat which is a major concern with nuclear waste storage. Believe me, if this was an easy problem the French and Japanese would have tried the suggested solutions a long time ago.

Um, you don’t put it all in one particular spot.

And, as said, the reason this hasn’t been done is because the government prohibits it from being done, not because of any technical problem.

Nor would the heat matter, buried deep in the rock.  Heat matters in a situation like the Chernobyl sarcophagus because it’s a lightweight, manmade structure that could collapse due to a steam overpressure.  It’s not physically possible for simple heat pressure to move the mass of rock we’re talking about.

Joe

BrownianHeatingTech - 24 April 2008 11:33 PM

BeGreen - 24 April 2008 11:29 PM

This is a serious oversimplification of the issues involved. If it was as simple as digging a deep hole in the ground (mineshaft) and filling it with spent nuclear material certainly this would have been done a long time ago. The problem is, that is not a good solution. I’m not a nuclear scientist, but from what I have read, putting thousands of tons of nuclear material together creates massive heat which is a major concern with nuclear waste storage. Believe me, if this was an easy problem the French and Japanese would have tried the suggested solutions a long time ago.

Um, you don’t put it all in one particular spot.

Joe

That`s right, we spread it everywhere, so the whales, and the birds , and everyone gets a bite out of it.  Of course, seems like common sense to me!!

sonnyinbc - 24 April 2008 11:39 PM

That`s right, we spread it everywhere, so the whales, and the birds , and everyone gets a bite out of it.  Of course, seems like common sense to me!!

Once you sober up, you’ll probably figure out that I meant multiple boreholes.  Until then, I’d suggest laying off the absinthe for a while.

Joe

BrownianHeatingTech - 24 April 2008 05:28 PM

Pumped storage like that is a cool way to store electricity, but that doesn’t make it a good companion to PV.  Ferraris are a cool way to travel, but that doesn’t make them a good way for me to deliver a heating system.  Being cool doesn’t make something a good idea.

(By the way, I do know a thing or two about pumped storage, as I’ve toyed with the notion of using it as a way to store power for my house.  I don’t imagine that it is efficient, but rather that it may be more cost-effective than lead-acid batteries.  It’s certainly not more efficient than a nuclear plant, by any stretch of the imagination.)

Joe

All systems have losses. The question is what are acceptable losses and why.

PV power is helpful and in some locations a good start. But thinking of just PV for solar is narrow minded. True, storage is the key issue, but there are options. For example, there are a couple of interesting ideas for solar that have much better efficiencies and are proving themselves well in pilot programs. The first is using massive solar furnaces to heat phase change salts to high temps and then storing them in the earth for nightime/cloudy day retrieval. There is a large scale project going in Nevada that will utilize this technology.
http://www.news.com/Full-steam-ahead-for-Nevada-solar-project/2100-11392_3-6166113.html

The second is a large solar tower system that stores enough heat to run itself during the night. This system was tested successfully for 7 yrs in a 50 kw pilot project in Spain. True it works best in a dry sunny climate, but we have that in Nevada and the southwest.
http://www.enviromission.com.au/project/project.htm

Solar will be an important part of our weaning off of fossil fuel based power. It isn’t the final answer or universal panacea, but it will be a valuable asset once we start really putting our minds together and creating new infrastructure to solve our power needs.

BrownianHeatingTech - 24 April 2008 11:43 PM

sonnyinbc - 24 April 2008 11:39 PM

That`s right, we spread it everywhere, so the whales, and the birds , and everyone gets a bite out of it.  Of course, seems like common sense to me!!

Once you sober up, you’ll probably figure out that I meant multiple boreholes.  Until then, I’d suggest laying off the absinthe for a while.

Joe

Joe, personal attacks are uncalled for. Even in the ashcan. You are out of bounds.

BrownianHeatingTech - 24 April 2008 11:43 PM

sonnyinbc - 24 April 2008 11:39 PM

That`s right, we spread it everywhere, so the whales, and the birds , and everyone gets a bite out of it.  Of course, seems like common sense to me!!

Once you sober up, you’ll probably figure out that I meant multiple boreholes.  Until then, I’d suggest laying off the absinthe for a while.

Joe

Hmmm, it is people like you that sometimes make us canucks (who are your number one supplier of crude oil) make us want to turn off the taps.  Talk about sobering up,mabye if we shut off the taps you will wake up from your drunkeness from drinking our oil.  Can you imagine the hangover>>??

God bless Canada and save us from people like you.

Also note, the scale of our accumulated nuclear waste is huge and growing. Even with lots of boreholes you are stacking thousands of pounds of waste on top of itself. The problem is not as trivial as perceived it or it would have become standard practice.

Closing thread due to increasing, unwarranted personal attacks.