I went inside that in the mid-1990s when I was a teenager. It was really cool. I had no idea where I was going, too. My dad just walked up to me and asked me if I wanted to go for a drive, and didn't say anything. Suddenly, he randomly pulled off of Rt 2 and followed a country road in the woods.
We pulled into the visitor's center, outside of the mountain. He often took the family to things like this because he worked for the power company, so I just thought we were stopping at a place that he heard of at work. Then we got into a bus and drove inside and took a tour.
That was one of the coolest things I ever saw as a teenager.
Ah, the 90s. Such a great time for, "hey kid, let me show you something."
I remember getting semi-private, and slightly off-the-official-track tour of a nuclear power plant by my Dad. His company was involved in servicing the plant during an outage. It was open for organized public tours during that time (an idea that just seems bonkers now). My brothers and I got to see that part, and even a little bit more.
I was pre-teen at the time and unfortunately he has passed. I really wish I could get more details from him on this and other stories.
My Grade 3 teacher had connections with someone who worked at a nuclear generating station in Ontario. There was an open house (!) one weekend that she took my dad and I to. Next year, there was an open house at a different plant that I also got to go to. What’s interesting was that photography with non-SLR camera was allowed but no video camera recordings.
Some of the memorable things were being able to go into the control room with a bunch of green screens, walking up to the spent fuel pool, a drive through tour on a school bus through the outdoor spent fuel storage facility, and seeing an SGI workstation (with 3D shutter goggles!) that they used to model water flow of Lake Ontario in the event of an inadvertent release. I distinctly remember the unique smell of the second plant, something akin diesel exhaust.
I did that for my parents, when I was working at the Pentagon and they came to town for a visit. We saw the full public tour, plus I took them on a private tour. And since I had escort privileges inside the NMCC, I took them on a private tour of that, too -- including the Crisis Action Center floor.
That's amazing. My dad and I were heading home from a trip to visit relatives (late '80's, I think) and he pulled a similar "hey, want to see something cool?" thing with me, and that's where we ended up.
I now do the same thing with my (now) teenager. He grumbles about it now that he's older, but he still enjoys it.
A section of the upper reservoir's dam wall was overtopped, the pumps continued to run, and the section failed, releasing a billion gallons of water in 12 minutes. The flow washed away the forest and soil down to the bedrock. One home was destroyed and its occupants injured, though thankfully there were no deaths.
The failure had several causes, but the most infamous one is that the failsafe gauge had been moved above the top of the dam wall to avoid false positives.
The reservoir was repaired and as far as I know continues to operate. I backpacked in the area several times and the dam wall has a striking appearance on the horizon.
You used to be able to go up the "mountain" and stand on the wall and look out over the water. Unfortunately, when they rebuilt it, they put gates at the road right off the highway.
> Since the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant shut down two years ago, Northfield has been buying its off-peak operating power straight off the grid. But as more solar and wind comes online, Bakas believes the pumped storage generating station could one day run as a totally climate-friendly supplier of electricity.
> "I think the goal of our facility would be to look at the opportunities to purchase purely green, renewable power and be able to supply green power to the grid," he says.
So right now it's fueled by... gas and coal.
They could just buy clean, green energy from up north (if lobbyists hadn't killed the project). [0]
Or you know they could have kept Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station operating if they really cared about CO2. If all you care about is carbon, the price shouldn't matter when you need base load energy.
It is never just one thing you care about. CO2 matters. Price matters. Safety matters. Aesthetics matters. Public relations matters. Not all matter the same amount, but none are irrelevant either. Finding a real world solution is about making the best trade offs possible. You can’t just identify the most important factor and declare that the n-1 others are irrelevant
> You can’t just identify the most important factor and declare that the n-1 others are irrelevant
I mean, yeah obviously. I'm poking fun at them for talking a big game about climate and solar/wind while actually shifting base load energy back to coal.
Nuclear is far safer per kwh and takes up less land (Aesthetics).
Coal seems like they traded some cost savings and less nuclear outrage for less safety, higher CO2 out put, and the cost of looking like condescending hypocrites. But that's just like one man's opinion.
Actually the price is all that matters. Nuclear is the most expensive way to produce energy. Too expensive really. Even for base load. Pumped hydro can provide a lot of spare capacity and is actually pretty common, low tech, and cheap to do in some areas. Most of existing capacity is quite old. But still delivering tens of GW of power and about 0.5 twh per year.
Cost is the main reason for nuclear plants to be closed. The companies operating them have to make a profit and that's hard when your competition runs circles around you in terms of cost and undercut your pricing to the point where you are losing money. Keeping aging, expensive nuclear plants open costs a lot of money and requires continuous investments. It simply can't be done without tax payer money and a state protected monopoly on prices.
> Vermont consumes more than three times as much energy as it produces, but its total energy consumption is the smallest among the states, which contributes to Vermont having the lowest energy-related carbon dioxide emissions of any state.
Sounds like they care about both carbon and money. Smart.
I think they already get the majority of their imported power from Canadian hydro, presumably the transmission line was just to increase that.
Do you have actual stats on what the current power mix is?
Looking it up, it seems they only use coal in that region during peak periods, when pumped storage won't be running, so they're probably already close to 100% clean.
> Engineering studies for the plant began in October 1964, with early site preparation starting three years later. In 1972 its 1,168 megawatts (1,566,000 hp) hydroelectric plant became operational as the largest such facility in the world.[citation needed] The facility was built to balance the supply from the nearby Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.[3]
A very common reason for building these historically.
$10m project. What one would expect, pumped hydro:
> Northfield Mountain is a naturalist's wonderland. But if you look around, you'll see an unnatural site: a 5-billion-gallon battery.
Energy capacity: 5b gallons * 8.35lbs/gallon * kWh/2,655,220ft-lb (pounds raised 1 ft) = 15.6MWh per foot raised or lowered. At $10m, that's a ridiculous amount of capacity.
Let's be optimistic & say you can somehow get batteries for $0.1/watt-hour, lower better. I just payed 5x that for some rc lipos, but let's be optimistic.
This is 10M$/15.66MWh/ft. The last is what makes this absurdly cheap. If those 5b gallons are raised up from the source only 1 foot, it'd be $0.64/watt-hour, more expensive.
But if you lift that water up 6 feet, it's down to $0.1/watt-hour, and suddenly you're at parity for the best anyone can expect. Lift that water up a 200 ft hill and you're down to $0.0032/watt-hour stored. Lifting a huge body of water is a colossal amount of work, it turns out, and thats what makes pumped hydro storage absurdly cost-effective.
Please also note the other comment. Apparently the new 5b gallon project is not $10m, it's unknown what it will cost, the $10m was for an old project. Even without knowing the cost of this new project, I expect the final figures will blow li-ion storage prices out of the water. For ex, if it it cost 10x more, $100m, but is up a 200ft hill, it's still $0.032/watt-hour. And there's really not a strong reason to stop at 200ft either; it's limited mostly by whatever the terrain offers (and how cost effectively one can engineer strong pumps & tubes. turns out we're pretty awesome at that.).
Yeah the article I think does a disservice to pumped hydro.
> Actually, the Sisyphean labor of pumping water up and down the mountain is a net energy loss -- more electricity is used then generated.But because off-peak electricity costs less than the price Northfield gets for what it generates when demand is high, the system is a moneymaker.
I think I understand what they’re saying but it makes it sound wasteful
> I think I understand what they’re saying but it makes it sound wasteful
Just in case it's not clear to anyone (or to you) they pump the water up the mountain with cheap (often renewable) energy when there's a surplus, and then release it instead of turning on the more expensive gas generators to fuel the peak demand.
The energy has to go somewhere so they are using it for SOMETHING instead of just heating up a giant resistor and venting it into the air. This is because demand is so variable.
This is the equivalent of storing water from a river in a reservoir when you aren't watering your field. Sure, some of it evaporates but you aren't just letting it run into the ocean.
I wonder... What if you used a transparent container that utilized the sun to add pressure during the day while it's being used then pump it at night(cooler). Worth the effort for noticeable gain or no?
My guess is that the cycle efficiency would be a simple Carnot cycle, and since the delta(T) is small the efficiency would be minuscule and you never measure the difference, never mind pay back the glass.
Your better off putting floating solar panels on top
Are floating solar panels a thing? My naive assumption is that (most places) land is abundant enough that you can put solar panels everywhere. Dealing with the nature-hates-you-engineering of working with water seems like a method of last resort.
You get co-benefits of reducing water evaporation and plant growth (some places just use plastic balls for this same purpose) on the water side and on the solar side you get some cooling which increases efficiency.
For existing dams the ability to share the existing connections in an area that probably isn't flat except for the water is neat.
Pumped hydro energy storage is already low specific energy. Compressed air and lifting large masses are even less economical schemes.
It may be cheaper to just offer time of use pricing to incentivize demand response. EV charging, washing machines, and dishwashers use timers to shift demand to off-peak hours. HVAC and water heaters can be connected via smart grid switches or thermostats. Precooling or preheating can be exploited. During the highest demand days temperatures can be relaxed or units can be duty cycled by splitting customers' units into four groups A B C D and running each for 15 min. to smooth out a soften a sharp spike in total demand.
The only issue is: you need water an mountains... They are not that rare, but definitively not enough for a full scale usage, we can and should use them when possible, but it does not suffice...
It's not mere math: Norway and Swiss have much more hydro than they normally need, last summer they have imported electricity due to drought (rare for both country, especially for Norway) and both who sell to them are mostly Sweden and France from nuclear.
When you need X from renewable you actually need 4X at least to be sure having enough in bad moments, energy is extremely* important and we can't going soft with it. Hydro is largely the best renewable since is almost constant (with their seasons, but still pretty stable) however is not as predictable and constant ad an NPP or an oil/gas/coal one.
So far very few countries have been able to run on mostly hydro only, all small, with little industry and very mountainous. Unfortunately too many dream miracles of free energy everywhere instead of trying...
Hum, I think not, you are talking about math, like "hey, you p.v. produce 130% of your yearly consumption!!!" vs "yes, sure, but self-consumption is only 50% because at night I need energy and I miss it, while in the sunny day I have much more than my average needs".
Or to be less vague: I understand you think a country can run with hydro storage, I think definitely not for most countries: yes we can regulate our network frequency with pumped storage, when energy demand goes down (for instance also because p.v. and eolic produce much) we pump water in altitude and we release it when demand grow. It's nice and it does work very well: ONLY if our storage in altitude suffice for FAR more than our normal needs. Enough more to have water during a drought period + high energy demand, enough to survive days etc.
If you live nearby a waterfall or a quick/big enough river you might get 99% of your needs out of it to power your home. But at a nation scale is much more complicated and 99% would be still not enough...
You said there is not enough water and mountains. This is the point I disagree with.
For pumped storage you don't need a river or to worry about drought. Just coastline with mountains.
1 small lake could store enough to power the US for a peak hour. 20 could store enough for a day.
Yes you would need to charge them, yes it would cost money. But geograpy is not the limiting factor for most countries.
That's fantasy: you can't pump water for long distances and you need to make it fall to get electricity back. Salt water pollute land, corrode turbines and pipes quickly, can't be used anyway, surely can't be used from the sea to the mountains.
Not only: a small lake can store enough for a single home, not more. Pumped storage is far from efficient in energy terms. Consider a thing: we (nearly all nations on the world) have already implemented much of the hydro we can make, simply because it's effective and cheap. We can just do a bit more, but a bit.
BTW the principle is:
- you have a large basin in altitude, with some gates to control the falling flow
- you have a river with a low altitude lake because anyway you do not pump all water back, nor you can't recovery it once used to produce energy and we talk about much water
- you have pipes and turbines and pumps with other pipes
Normally you let a bit of water falling in the pipes making turbines turn producing electricity. When demand low a little bit you just divert part of the falling water out of turbines, eventually pumping back a bit, if the demand fall MUCH you need to consume to keep the network frequency. Normal hydro pump back very little water. With p.v. and eolic who can produce a significant amount of energy just few hours/day you can pump more. So from the low altitude basin/lake you pump back to the higher one. That's is. Depending on the meteo you need to dump more or less water, or you have too little quantity to produce etc.
That simple game means you can't do hydro anywhere on any mountains and grabbing water even far from them.
I'm not, but anyway if you want try do describe visually your pumped-hydro nationwide revolutionary system so we can discuss with something tangible what can be done and what can't.
We pulled into the visitor's center, outside of the mountain. He often took the family to things like this because he worked for the power company, so I just thought we were stopping at a place that he heard of at work. Then we got into a bus and drove inside and took a tour.
That was one of the coolest things I ever saw as a teenager.