this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Dams are a whole another story ecologically but even leaving that aside, we are talking 200-300GW capacity currently in the world for PHES, even if you construct damns on every possible lakes, estimates are around 1000GW that world can build. World currently consumes close to 8000GW on baseload. We won't even cover 15% of baseload with PHES.
If you're trolling with your storage as magical solution keep trolling.
I'm not saying storing potential energy doesn't work, it works and even though we lose some energy in conversion it's still better than chemical batteries. No question there, my point is simple, we don't have enough infrastructure to cover the world's baseload demand by releasing stored energy. We need something that can produce baseload power 24x7. Geothermal and tidal(debatable but close enough) are the only viable renewable energy sources we have that run 24x7 and they're not enough to cover the world's energy demands. Adding PSEH doesn't cover it either. We need something more and nuclear (fission or fusion) are the only other options that don't emit CO2.