I skipped the meeting, but the Memos showed that "Ed Huntress"
wrote on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:05:11 -0500 in
rec.crafts.metalworking :

Standard practice in the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme (NSW Australia) is
to
use cheap off-peak power to pump low water up high for use later on (peak
period) for power generation.

The water is simply stored energy.

Yes - they *do* do it.

Ah, "cost" - they charge extra for the electricity delivered by
the pumped water. But does the amount of electricity produced equal
or exceed the amount consumed in the pumping?
--
pyotr filipivich
We will drink no whiskey before its nine.
It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!

Pumped storage in well-engineered, utility-scale applications typically
recovers over 70% of the energy consumed. So, economically, it's at least as
good as other large-scale load-balancing approaches, which, in most cases in
the US, is otherwise done with gas turbines.

So compared to "completely" wasting the power, they only "lose"
30%, and can charge more for the 70%. Sound like a friend who used
to go to the horse races and bet everything. Lost a lot, but on the
whole, would come home with about 2/3rds of what he went with - all
legal winnings.

Those big steam-turbine generators absorb pretty big losses in startup and
shutdown, so the utility companies gain, also, by keeping them running at
high capacity all night long.

Yeah, there is that too.


pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich
We will drink no whiskey before its nine.
It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!