[HN Gopher] New England's Largest Battery Is Hidden Inside a Mas... ___________________________________________________________________ New England's Largest Battery Is Hidden Inside a Mass. Mountain (2016) Author : johnobrien1010 Score : 19 points Date : 2022-05-25 21:15 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.wbur.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.wbur.org) | juice_bus wrote: | Tom Scott also did a great video[0] on this | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jx_bJgIFhI | rektide wrote: | $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. | elihu wrote: | $10m is a new state initiative. This pumped hydro facility was | built 45 years ago, so not related to the new initiative. | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: | Spoiler: it's a pumped hydroelectric storage. | tshaddox wrote: | Pumped-storage hydro is cool. I first became aware of it in 2005 | when the catastrophic failure of this one in Missouri made local | news: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_... | | 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. | ge96 wrote: | 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? | macondo wrote: | 908B64B197 wrote: | > 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] | | [0] https://apnews.com/article/election-2021-maine-hydropower- | li... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-25 23:00 UTC)