[VIDEO] Britain's Largest Battery Is Actually A Lake - Tom Scott

[LoneWolf_Recon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jx_bJgIFhI

That's so elegant, wish we could get sites like that here in the US (of course its super geography dependent).

[smurfy]

It's one of the coolest things we have that no one really talks about

[gman003-main]

That's fairly common practice in the US, with hydroelectric dams. So it's not a pure battery, because it overall produces more electricity than it consumes, but it still uses gravity and water and pumps to store energy when it's cheap and expend it when it's needed.

There's a lake not too far away from me, formed by a hydroelectric dam, that's a common vacation spot. I've been there many times, it's actually quite nice. It practically has tides, because every day, the water level slowly falls by about two or three feet, only to rise back up overnight when fewer people are running their A/C or stuff, and the nuclear plant in the region is producing power in excess of demand.

Something other places are experimenting with is floating solar panels. Which kind of makes sense? You've already got the hookups for high-voltage power lines, solar naturally works well with pumped hydro storage (reverse of my lake's situation: produce excess power during the day when the sun shines, use hydro to keep things running overnight), and covering parts of the lake even cut down on evaporation. It's not super common yet but I think it will be increasingly used.

[LoneWolf_Recon]

Also helps when the water is just a big thermal mass to keep the panels cool and improve efficiency.

I didn't know that some hydro dams did that, I thought they couldn't have much control of that due to (atleast here in the South) most hydro dams being on a river.

[Karmah]

He says that during the night they use the excess energy to pump the water back up the mountain - but obviously they can't pump all of it back, because that would take more energy then the system puts out. So how does this system not run out of energy? Does rain water at the top of the mountain make up for the difference, or do they source energy from the grid to restore the amount of water at the top?

[Kazumi]

I assume that the lake is refilled through natural means as well. But it doesn't matter if it takes more energy to pump it back up during nights. The system isn't self-contained so it just draws that extra bit more from the grid that would be required since the grid load is so low anyway. (Just my uneducated guess).

[ZombieDawgs]

It's explained in the video that it isn't used to generate energy but acts as a rechargable battery that can be used at peak times to help with demand.

[Download]

It's a battery dude, it takes power generated at night, and stores it for later use.