Pumped Hydro Storage For Solar and Wind

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Another question AF5. Why do you not also look at the efficiency/capacity/output of Brazeau output as you do for solar.
TransAlta’s hydroelectric plants primarily provide electricity during periods of peak electrical demand and ensure system stability.

You answered my question in your own post. I bolded it for you.
There is no apples to apples. As we have been showing, renewables primarily provide electricity during periods of peak electrical SUPPLY, and low electrical DEMAND, to ensure grid INstability. So the dam and most fossil fuel plants are running at lower capacity factors because of solar and wind. They are being used as the storage. The under used capacity is artificial, to ensure system stability.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

AF5, You are right, I should not have called it farm land but rather agricultural land. I find it interesting that agricultural land used for pasture and grazing such as where the Lomond solar farm you consider lost due to a solar installation, but flooding of agricultural land in the Peace River valley that has been used for both farming and grazing you do not feel should be considered. Great spin.

I only used Brazeau as an example that land used for agricultural purposes including raising livestock is lost just as land is lost due to solar installations because someone mentioned Brazeau. There are lots of examples where actual farm land has been displaced, especially in southern Alberta because of the construction of dams.

You bring up a good point about dams in southern Alberta. A few acres of borderline desert are lost to flooding in the dams, and millons of acres of former almost desert has been converted into some of the most productive land anywhere thanks to the irrigation provided by the dams. Electricity generation is a bonus, not the purpose.

The land at Brazeau was not grazing land, it is 25 km away from the closest grazing land. It was swamp and bush. Check google earth, or go for a drive.

And all of the farming and grazing land to be flooded by site C, only exists thanks to the previously construted dam that stopped it from being flooded constantly. Even though that dam created a reservoir 20 times larger than site C. Should we tear it down under the same logic?

[tweety]

Sure doesnt take chuck long to come in and defend insanity.

Hmm, I wonder if there was a way to store water for power. What about a hydro dam? Nah, how about a man made tower that holds 0.00000000001% of the water a dam would. Yes.

A water tower is a dam. Same as their 8MW brick towers. And lake to lake storage systems. Your little Sk brain can't understand that. A tiny country that generates twice the hydro power of SK, and has been doing water storage generation since 1890 might know what they are doing.

https://www.ge.com/news/reports/how-the-swiss-turned-an-alpine-peak-into-a-battery-the-size-of-a-nuclear-plant https://www.ge.com/news/reports/how-the-swiss-turned-an-alpine-peak-into-a-battery-the-size-of-a-nuclear-plant

[AlbertaFarmer5]

A water tower is a dam. Same as their 8MW brick towers. And lake to lake storage systems. Your little Sk brain can't understand that. A tiny country that generates twice the hydro power of SK, and has been doing water storage generation since 1890 might know what they are doing.

https://www.ge.com/news/reports/how-the-swiss-turned-an-alpine-peak-into-a-battery-the-size-of-a-nuclear-plant https://www.ge.com/news/reports/how-the-swiss-turned-an-alpine-peak-into-a-battery-the-size-of-a-nuclear-plant

Exactly. Switzerland is ideally suited to pumped hydro storage. A quote right from the article.

It’s the only grid-scale method of storing energy

So why would they be resorting to a mechanical machine when nature provides them with the almost ready made solution? The CBC article referenced at the beginning of the thread is a crane for lifting and lowering weights for energy storage. Water has an 80% round trip efficiency, how could this machine improve upon that when a full life cycle is considered?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

AF5, You are right, I should not have called it farm land but rather agricultural land. I find it interesting that agricultural land used for pasture and grazing such as where the Lomond solar farm you consider lost due to a solar installation, but flooding of agricultural land in the Peace River valley that has been used for both farming and grazing you do not feel should be considered. Great spin.

You really should keep track of who you are arguing with. I said nothing about Lomond or the land lost to solar. I didn't spin anything. I just called our your blatant BS about dams. I thought you were in favour of calling out BS, but when I do it, it is "spin"?

[burnt]

You really should keep track of who you are arguing with. I said nothing about Lomondor the land lost to solar. I didn't spin anything. I just called our your blatant BS about dams. I thought you were in favour of calling out BS, but when I do it, it is "spin"?

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[dmlfarmer]

Af5, you are ignoring the point I am making. I responded to Hamloc statement regarding the loss of land due to solar installations. The point I was trying to make is hydro, which most on the forum support also utiizes land some of which may be used for cropping, grazing or even forestry. Keephills is the largest open surface mine in Canada and has permitted over 12000 ha for coal mining to provide electrical power. Coal is not renewable, and at keephills has utilized land, some of which had agricultural potential.

Do you agree with opening the eastern slopes of the Rockies for coal mining? Some of that land has been used for generations for ranching. And that coal is not even generating power, it only provides a low royalty payment.

the fact is resource extraction also uses land, just as renewables do and if someone like Hamloc thinks a valid arguement against solar is to measure MW/acre, then it is fair game to look at the land cost for conventional electrical production including coal and hydro

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Yes, I wholeheartedly support coal mining on the eastern slopes. Regardless of what energy supply we use in the future, it will require metallurgical coal in copious quantities for infrastructure. The world is far better off having in mine in a first world country with very strict environmental and safety regulations, Compared to all of the alternative locations.

What does metallurgical coal have to do with the footprint Hydro electric versus solar?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

No one immune to the either or club.
Your "side" can get way out there sometimes too chuck.

And really funny part about that, Is that every time I offer a balanced perspective such as earlier in this thread, Chuck Always notices that and chastises me for it, Then a couple of posts later repeats the same old baseless claim About us being all or nothing.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

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No, that's not how it works with these folks, more like this:

Then move on to oh, look, a squirrel, or in this case, oh look, a metallurgical coal mine...