smackaholic wrote:
Oddly enough, that is exactly what we do to store excess power already. Water/gravity make the best large capacity battery available.
In certain places and certain situations, sure. I was working at a much more basic level to ridicule the tard, was all.
I've heard crazy proposals lately -- since our state decided to do the democrat thing (:SHOCKER:), and give huge subsidies to the well-connected wealthy folk who run wind-powered energy companies (there's a reason the world windsurfing championships have always been held in the Gorge), it's been a bit of a problem: the wind blows the hardest when the Columbia (hydroelectric capital of the US) is flowing the most. Last year, there was so much power coming from the BPA dams (which during high river flows, they can't really "shut off"), and no one to buy it (CA and AZ were doing just fine at the time, our two best power-swapping buddies), they ordered the wind farms shut down. WHOA, what a stink that caused with the tit-suckers... they sued (unsuccessfully, IIRC).
But people have brought up ideas to run pipelines from the Creek up Mt Hood (greenies won't like it, despite the minimal impact), and dumping mass water on the upper elevations of Hood, to increase snowpack/glaciation, through pumps that utilize the excess electricity. Still way frozen up there in early spring, and the runoff would come later in the summer, which would keep them big dams humming during the summer. As an added bonus, it would improve fish migration (which is a huge, huge management issue for the BPA, fish vs electricity in summer), and create better irrigation opportunities.
Seems pretty simple and relatively cheap to me (although the tech aspect of pumping water up that high, when there's no power grid at the higher elevations, due to impossibility, could be a logistical problem... Timberline brings fuel in on trucks and runs generators, since neither underground lines or overhead towers are an option there).
Seems like it's worth looking into.