[HN Gopher] Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beau...
___________________________________________________________________
Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of
infrastructure
Author : elemeno
Score : 82 points
Date : 2023-11-02 11:30 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| xkekjrktllss wrote:
| The intro paragraph is about halfway down after a mass of self-
| indulgence. It should have been first, of course.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Not stated in the article: There are very few places in the world
| with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much
| distance.
|
| Wherever that happens, it is probably financially a good idea to
| build one of these.
|
| But that geography is really rather rare, so the rest of the
| world will probably have to use gas peaker plants (environment-
| killing) or battery storage (expensive).
| eppp wrote:
| There are lots of places where such things can be built though.
| TVA's Raccoon Mountain is an example.
| https://www.tva.com/energy/our-power-system/hydroelectric/ra...
|
| There is water at the base of a lot of mountains, just knock
| the top off and build a lake.
| sambeau wrote:
| There's really not a lot of point these days. Batteries can
| be used for load balancing and pump-storage is very
| inefficient.
| eppp wrote:
| We should do all of it at the same time. Diversity and over
| provisioning is a way to have options and redundancy.
| sambeau wrote:
| The U.K. needs something like 30 TWh of storage (the
| National Grid has 50 TWh in their plan).
|
| We'd need thousands of these.
|
| They're great for load balancing, especially when coupled
| with compressed air to get them generating within
| seconds, but we'd have to flood all the glens of Scotland
| and Wales to make a dent in our needs.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Moss Landing, CA is the worlds largest battery. It is
| 3.0GWh, and has been operating 2 months.
|
| However, Dinorwig, UK is far larger at 9.1 GWh, and is 40
| years old.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| For comparison, you could build a replacement for
| Dinorwig with less than 1 quarter (12 weeks) of Tesla's
| single Megafactory annual output, and have it installed
| in less than a year, in any geography (assuming you're
| ready to run copper and pour slabs; storage enclosures
| can be installed in parallel, it's trucks, cranes, and
| human labor bolting them down).
|
| Timelines go down as battery manufacturing scales up.
| TBMs and mountain cutting are not getting faster or
| cheaper.
| bee_rider wrote:
| A quarter worth of production from the Megafactory sounds
| pretty expensive.
|
| I mean somebody should make a giant battery backup, but
| Dinorwig _does_ have a pretty big advantage in terms of
| existing-ness.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Existing power stations that are paid off have an
| advantage considering cost of capital (nuclear and pumped
| hydro), but that advantage eventually theta decays when
| maintenance costs exceed new build costs. France is
| experiencing this now with its aging nuclear fleet [1].
| Running the math on Tesla's calculator [2], a quarter
| worth of annual production (10GWh) runs $3,798,849,522
| (~$3.8B). That includes installation (per Tesla). Can new
| pumped hydro be built cheaper than that? For sure, keep
| existing low carbon generation or storage in service as
| long as commercially reasonable.
|
| [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-
| revises-up-c...
|
| [2] https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design
| sambeau wrote:
| For load balancing, these days, there's really no need
| for giant monolithic storage projects. Every renewables
| project can -- and should be made to -- have storage
| built in to it. Companies leave it out as it would make
| there price per MWh higher, and, for some reason,
| governments let them bid without it.
|
| (Add storage to offshore wind and it suddenly looks
| similar in cost to nuclear.)
|
| So, no one's suggesting replacing pump storage with giant
| battery banks, just spreading batteries and other storage
| across the grid.
|
| We still have no technology capable of storing TWhs
| though, and that's what we need to remove carbon from our
| power grid.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Dinorwig cost 0.5 billion GBP to produce in 1974 (roughly
| 1 billion pounds in today's money) and took 10 years to
| build.
|
| Nobody is arguing Dinorwig should be torn down. However,
| it took 10 years to build dinorwig. It takes less than a
| year to build a battery version of Dinorwig with
| basically 0 geographic requirements. The cost would be
| roughly comparable for a battery backup (at $200USD/kWh,
| it'd be $1.8 billion to build a similarly sized plant. or
| 1.4 billion GBP)
| squigg wrote:
| SSE are also hoping to build Coiri Glas in Scotland,
| which is 30GWh https://www.sse.com/news-and-
| views/2023/03/britain-s-largest...
|
| Cruachan 2 will take total site capacity to 1GWh
| https://www.drax.com/about-us/our-projects/cruachan-2/
| sambeau wrote:
| We need more like 30 _TWh_ of storage to secure the grid
| without fossil fuels.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > SSE's PS100m commitment to further developing Coire
| Glas comes as the leading low carbon energy
| infrastructure company awaits the UK Government's
| decision on how it intends to financially support the
| deployment of long-duration electricity storage, as set
| out in last year's British Energy Security Strategy.
|
| > This could include the introduction by the UK
| Government of a 'revenue stabilisation mechanism' in the
| form of an adapted Cap and Floor scheme to support
| investment in long-duration storage. This would also be
| alongside broader consideration of how the electricity
| market, including the Capacity Mechanism and the
| Flexibility Markets, value the contribution of low carbon
| flexible assets such as pumped storage.
|
| AKA... They're waiting for a government handout before
| they begin build. While they can 'buy low, sell high' and
| make a lot of money, they _also_ want a government
| guarantee that they will make that much money. Payouts
| from that guarantee will effectively become an
| electricity tax.
| sambeau wrote:
| Pump-storage hydro is for load balancing as it can't store
| anything on a grid scale and is very inefficient. Sadly, it
| could never replace gas -- the U.K. alone would need thousands.
| Gud wrote:
| It is absolutely "grid scale". Did you read the article?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-
| storage_hydroel...
| sambeau wrote:
| It's grid-scale load balancing, not grid-scale storage.
| Grid-scale storage is hundreds and thousands of GWh. The UK
| needs 30-50 TWh to be secure without fossil fuels.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Keep an eye on Australia, Snowy 2 (whose costs are blowing out)
| [1], and battery uptake [2]. Based on cost decline curves of
| lithium scale utility storage, batteries will be cheaper by the
| time Snowy is commissioned. Battery manufacturing is ramping
| because every automaker is being forced to electrify, Tesla is
| preparing to build a second Megafactory factory for battery
| storage in China [3], and batteries can be installed anywhere.
|
| Batteries can also provide grid support (frequency and voltage
| support when transmission or generators trip) and can be grid
| forming now; instead of having to follow the grid, they can
| drive grid health, including black start [4] when the grid is
| down. In South Australia, a new battery storage facility has
| recently come online and is in testing to enable AEMO, the grid
| operator, to turn down the requirement for ~70MW of constant
| fossil gas generation for grid services [5].
|
| [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/snowy-2-much-how-can-a-2-2gw-
| wat... ("This is the fourth time Snowy 2.0's cost has been
| reset - from $2 billion in 2017, to $3.8-$4.5 billion later
| that year, to $5.1 billion in 2019, to $5.9 billion in 2020, to
| $12 billion now (2023).")
|
| [2] https://www.energy-storage.news/global-bess-deployments-
| to-e... ("Global BESS deployments to exceed 400GWh annually by
| 2030, says Rystad Energy")
|
| [3] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-china-megafactory-
| constructi... ("Tesla's estimated initial production capacity
| for the China-based Megapack factory is 10,000 units per year
| or about 40GWh.") [My note: This is equal to their existing
| capacity in Lathrop, California]
|
| [4] https://www.nrel.gov/grid/black-start.html
|
| [5]
| https://opennem.org.au/facilities/sa1/?selected=TIB&tech=bat...
| ("Torrens Island BESS")
| stephen_g wrote:
| Of course, Snowy 2 was a political project for which the
| planning was totally under-baked. It was a compromise set off
| by a centrist who was lukewarmly pro-renewable energy, but
| leading a party that was mostly dead against it and just
| wanted the Government to pump money into expanding fossil
| fuel ('coincidently' many of these MPs in the party have
| direct or indirect investment and interest in coal mining
| companies, oil and gas industry links, etc.).
|
| There was always much better ways the money could have been
| spent, like investment into offshore wind, battery banks etc.
| but to directly invest in renewables and battery storage was
| and is politically untenable for that party. The Government
| has changed now to the party that doesn't have the same kind
| of direct fossil fuel investments, but unfortunatly the
| massive political donations from the resource industry and
| oil & gas to our politicians is bipartisan so they talk
| 'clean energy' while not that much actually changes...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Agreed, lots of inertia and it will take time to course
| correct.
| FFP999 wrote:
| Is there any reason that "lakes" (i.e. big holes) can't be dug
| where they would be useful for this purpose?
|
| (Update: for those who are downvoting, it was a serious
| question.)
| ajb wrote:
| Well at least one of these was originally a quarry, so yes.
| But it would raise the cost a lot, if the excavate wasn't
| valuable as in this case.
| FFP999 wrote:
| It'll definitely raise the cost, I acknowledge that what
| I'm talking about isn't going to be a small project. I just
| wouldn't necessarily assume that it would raise the cost so
| much as to make this infeasible. To be clear, it's also not
| like I know anything about civil or power engineering.
| sambeau wrote:
| I've seen a suggestion that you could use two spheres in the
| sea one deep down, one near the surface.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I don't think so...
|
| You would presumably be pumping air from one sphere to the
| other.
|
| That air ends up compressing/decompressing, and therefore
| heating or getting cold. That dramatically lowers
| efficiency.
|
| And on top of that, a football stadium sized sphere full of
| compressed air at the bottom of the ocean is going to need
| hold-down anchors at a scale the world has never seen...
| sambeau wrote:
| > "The general idea is to have a closed vessel sitting on
| the seafloor. Surplus energy is then used to pump water
| out of this vessel, leaving the inside at a near-vacuum.
| When it's desired to recover energy from the system,
| water can be allowed to flow back into the vessel under
| the pressure generated by the seawater above. As the
| vessel is filled, the water flowing in turns a turbine,
| generating electricity in just the same way as a
| traditional pumped hydro system."
|
| https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/underwater-tanks-turn-
| energy...
|
| https://www.iee.fraunhofer.de/en/topics/stensea.html
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| If this were the 1950s I'm sure somebody would have tried
| nukes!
| FFP999 wrote:
| I mean, when all you have is a hammer, and also your entire
| society is repressing massive post traumatic stress
| disorder, everything looks like a nail.
| hwillis wrote:
| 1. The lower lake still needs to be substantially above sea
| level and the local water table etc. so that it can actually
| be drained and so that it doesn't just fill up with local
| water. You can't do this by the hoover dam, since you'd also
| have to lower the river another few dozen meters. That's more
| challenging than it sounds, since you'd have to continue
| digging all along its path until you reached the place that
| the river naturally fell to that lower altitude.
|
| 2. Reservoirs are very large. The lower reservoir in this
| article is 7 million cubic meters[1]. The Hoover dam passes
| 289 million cubic meters of water daily, with around 78.3
| million cubic meters of that generating electricity. The
| largest land vehicle in the world can excavate 700k cubic
| meters per day[2].
|
| [1]: https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/423380 [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overburden_Conveyor_Bridge_F60
|
| 3. We _do_ dig them out- the reservoir in the article was
| substantially enlarged. But it 's still rare to find places
| you can actually do that.
|
| 4. The upper reservoir is a totally different question. It
| would take over 125 years to dig out a hole the size of Lake
| Mead for the Hoover Dam. It would take almost a million of
| the bombs used the Sedan nuclear test[3] to dig that hole.
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_(nuclear_test)
| FFP999 wrote:
| Thanks; I guess if it were that simple, someone would have
| done it, being as neither pumped storage nor earthmoving
| are new technology.
| cesarb wrote:
| > There are very few places in the world with two large lakes,
| separated by a lot of height and not much distance.
|
| You only need one large lake (or a place which can be dammed to
| create one); the other one can be completely artificial, with
| no water inflow or outflow other than through the
| pumps/turbines. In fact, I think it might even be possible to
| make both reservoirs completely artificial, and fill them by
| pumping water from somewhere else. That makes the necessary
| geography a lot less rare; you only need the appropriate height
| difference, and the ability to create artificial reservoirs on
| both ends.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Yes, but large artificial lakes aren't known for being cheap.
|
| Pumped storage needs _big_ lakes - a swimming pool on the top
| of a mountain isn 't going to cut it.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Counterexample:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...
|
| They only started with a single lake and a moderate amount of
| elevation.
| Dachande663 wrote:
| I had the luck to visit this as a child, before all the tourist
| side of it was shut down. I remember taking the bus past the
| giant turbine hall. A few facts I can remember:
|
| 1. Carol Vorderman did a lot of the engineering calculations,
| before she started on Countdown (probably only relevant to the UK
| lot).
|
| 2. They couldn't run powerlines from the facility to the grid as
| it's an AONB so they had to run them underground at a cost of
| PS1M per mile for however many miles.
|
| Great place along with Sellafield and the wind turbines in
| Norfolk for a kid to visit.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Sounds like we did a similar set of school trips, I remember
| standing in a big loud hall on top of the Sellafield reactor,
| and down inside electric mountain by the big turbines. I was
| most sad that they don't do tours at the moment, I wanted to
| take my daughter there.
| FFP999 wrote:
| You may not have heard, but they had a little trouble there
| at one point, I wouldn't take a kid there.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Are you referring to the Windscale fire of 1957, or
| something else?
|
| I remember visiting the Sellafield visitor centre as a kid
| in the 1990s. It was great.
| Neil44 wrote:
| What are you referring to?
| becurious wrote:
| You could also visit the Wylfa nuclear plant on Anglesey. Not
| sure when tours stopped (probably due to security) but you
| could see the reactor. All closed now.
| kraftman wrote:
| I did this at primary school too! We had a picnic next the
| bottom lake.
| LastTrain wrote:
| AONB = Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
| squigg wrote:
| If you are ever up in Scotland, you can still visit Cruachan -
| the sister power station at Loch Awe with a very similar
| design. I took my children there two months ago. They were as
| amazed as I hoped they would be! Visiting hours here:
| https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/
|
| If you are a Harry Potter fan, it's not far from Loch Awe to
| the famous viaduct at Glenfinnan as well. Details here:
| https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/glenfinnan-monument/high...
| sambeau wrote:
| If you are a Star Wars fan, Cruachan is the location of The
| Empire's base in Andor.
|
| As a Scot, who's done a lot of hillwalking in the past (and
| been scared witless by airforce jets suddenly appearing over
| the brim of a hill) it was amazing to see tie-fighters
| whooshing across the Scottish landscape.
| squigg wrote:
| I did not know that - thank you, my son watched Andor -
| I'll get him to show me!
| dano wrote:
| I visited Cruachan in 2019 by happenstance. It is really
| cool! I'm going to look for the Star Wars tie in - the
| architecture certainly does fit the theme. You can watch a
| Pathe video on Royal Opening of the dam and power station
| here https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/87792/
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| I _think_ it was someone on the Volts podcast[1], either David
| Roberts or a guest, who made the point (I 'm paraphrasing) that
| one of the most helpful things a regular person can do is start
| to think of solar arrays or windmills as beautiful; if building
| them isn't "climate but eyesore" but rather a "climate and
| beauty" proposition, they are much more likely to get built.
|
| 1: https://www.volts.wtf
| Mistletoe wrote:
| When I drive through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, etc. I think
| windmills are quite beautiful. On the plains they are the only
| thing to look at and are quite inspiring.
|
| They look like this:
| https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/oklahoma-wind-energy-turb...
| uptownJimmy wrote:
| Though not as technologically impressive, there are quite a few
| rather "simple" little hydroelectric dams tucked back in the
| Allegheny Mountains of the eastern USA. They are a marvel to see,
| worth seeking out if you are driving anywhere near them.
|
| Cheoah Dam is on the infamous Tail of the Dragon in TN, and
| there's a spot where you can pull over and see the whole thing
| below, it's such an inspiring thing.
| uticus wrote:
| > So, after all those television-watching Britons go to bed,
| Dinorwig's generators are run backwards.
|
| > It's a remarkably efficient process, with about 75% of the
| energy available for reuse.
|
| Not an (hardware) engineer, so wondering: are turbines typically
| efficient running _both_ ways? Or would a turbine in this
| scenario have tradeoffs compared to turbines that are designed
| for running in one direction only?
|
| The best I can come up with from the comfort of my armchair is
| that straight gears are typically equally efficient in either
| rotating direction, but often gears with angled teeth are used
| when one rotating direction is primary.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| The Dinorwig turbines are (like most hydro plants) Francis
| turbines. The blade still have an angle. Like a PC case fan,
| the angle is the same direction whether or not the turbine is
| "braking" or "pumping". But there very likely are tradeoffs in
| the turbine design to keep both functions relatively efficient.
|
| There are also what are called ternary sets, which are the
| generator turbine, the torque converter (a massive clutch) and
| a pump. A good diagram in here: https://voith.com/corp-
| en/11_06_Broschuere-Pumped-storage_ei.... These are used at
| another Welsh pumped storage station: Ffestiniog.
|
| Helical gears (the ones with angled teeth) are used not because
| one direction is better than the other, but because they have a
| larger contact area and allow larger forces for a given tooth
| size (module) and lower vibration because multiple teeth mesh
| at any time rather than one-by-one. The angle can go either
| way, and, indeed, can go both ways on one gear (a herringbone
| gear) to nullify the axial loading.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It couldn't be much worse, right? Otherwise they'd have just
| installed another turbine facing in the other direction.
| uticus wrote:
| I have no idea.
|
| I can easily imagine a turbine being a good chunk of the
| installation BOM cost and budget constraints saying price
| recoup in x years that extra parts doesn't balance against.
| And in this scenario, then no, another turbine facing the
| other direction would not be an option - though it is only
| efficient one way.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That's fair.
|
| You were clearly looking for an answer from somebody who
| knew something about the field, but I decided (for some
| reason) to come in with, like, over simplified first
| principles speculation. I hate it when people do what I
| did, haha. Sorry!
| ttul wrote:
| The Kemano generating station in British Columbia was built in
| the 1950s to supply power to an aluminum smelter. They hollowed
| out a mountain to drop a river through turbines. It's an
| incredible marvel of engineering.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemano_Generating_Station
| colanderman wrote:
| Massachusetts has a pumped storage station in the Berkshires,
| Bear Swamp. [1] As of a few years ago they had an underground
| visitor's center with a scale model and lots of info. Not sure
| whether it's open anymore though.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Swamp_Hydroelectric_Power...
| mindracer wrote:
| Incredible place, while at Bangor university I did my
| dissertation on electric mountain and now spend my weekend hiking
| round Snowdonia. Lovely part of the world
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I went to Aberystwyth and often went out into Snowdonia,
| particularly Bala. It's definitely one of the prettiest parts
| of the UK!
|
| I really regret not learning Welsh while I lived in such a
| Welsh-speaking part of Wales.
| arethuza wrote:
| I have to say that I really like the Welsh names: _Eryri_ for
| Snowdonia and _Yr Wyddfa_ for Snowdon itself.
| frantathefranta wrote:
| Czech Republic also has a pumped-storage plant in Dlouhe
| strane[0]. It's also in a protected landscape and in my opinion
| looks amazing [1], especially when you descend from Praded. It's
| one of the only large scale industrial projects in Czech Republic
| that is on a world-class level.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dlouh%C3%A9_str%C3%A1n%C4%9B_H..
| .
|
| [1]http://turystyka.studentnews.pl/img/wo/3/58/Elektrownia-
| wodn...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-02 23:01 UTC)