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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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Do some quick math. How much pumped hydro in terms of acre-feet would be required to power a hypothetical city like Chicago at night? Where would this theoretical reservoir be built?
I can't stop laughing at this as a unit of measurement
It's easier to visualize than 325 kilo-gallons.
I guess if you don't understand units of water per area, then there is no reason to expect you to be able to do any kind of critical analysis about why "pumped hydro" is a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre-foot
I am not American, so why would I use an American unit of measurement?
You can use whatever moon-units you want. I prefer to use people-centric units.
Ok, if you want an approximate American unit equivalent to a megalitre think of it as cube that can fit a blue whale
Dude, people can laugh at a term while still being able to do "critical analysis" ๐ "foot pound" sounds funny too. People can giggle about Uranus and still be astronomers.
That's a completely unnecessary way to do things. The mistake you're making is that this specific way must provide all power.
It doesn't. You combine methods for a reason. The wind blows at times when the sun isn't shining, and vice versa. We have weather data stretching back many decades to tell us how much a given region will give us of each. From there, you can calculate the maximum lull where neither is providing enough. Have enough storage to cover that lull, and double it as a safety factor.
Getting to 95% water/wind/solar with this method is relatively easy and would be an extraordinary change. Getting all the way to 100% is possible, just more difficult.
Do the math, how much grid-level storage do you need to power a city like chicago assuming zero baseload generation.