[pydry]

I'm curious about where you read this. I see this idea that pumped storage geography is rare pop up a lot on Hacker News but I don't know where it's coming from and it rarely seems to come with citations.

If you look at this map, you'll see that unlike, say, dam-appropriate geography, it's actually extremely common:

https://www.energytransitionpartnership.org/uploads/2023/05/...

[mschuster91]

The problem is, the potential for buildouts of pumped hydro isn't that large any more. In Europe, most usable areas have been built out, and new projects are likely to be denied because anything involving creating dams or bodies of water with rapid differences in water level is incredibly devastating on nature and wildlife.

[cbsmith]

More or less devastating than extracting heavy metals and setting up a battery farm?

[danmaz74]

I'll admit that I wasn't talking about potential green-field sites not linked to rivers or existing reservoirs, as described in your link. How many of the sites they identified as viable with their algorithm would actually be economically, socially and environmentally viable is a big question though. Not saying some of these sites can come to fruition, but for sure the capex and lead time for this kind of projects is huge.

[pydry]

I guess that answers my question. People are getting pumped storage and river dams mixed up. It seems mschuster91 also mixed them up.

Yes, the capex and lead times on one of these things can be huge, but it's comes out ahead of nuclear power on those fronts.

[mschuster91]

> People are getting pumped storage and river dams mixed up. It seems mschuster91 also mixed them up.

The environmental impact is bad for both.

River dams break fish crossings, the dammed up area gets flooded and wipes out nature as well as archeological artifacts and the dams are at constant risk of damage - especially in a war, see Ukraine for multiple examples, but also due to maintenance neglect, negligence during construction and natural disasters like earthquakes. In the worst cases such as China's Three Gorges dam, millions of people were displaced as well [1].

Pumped storage can come in two variants, either as an associate to ordinary river dams (so they inherit their issues), or as greenfield construction, where they have the same impact on the flooded are, with the additional impact of countless animals dying during pump and empty cycles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam#Displacement_...

[pydry]

A link to the three gorges dam wikipedia page says exactly nothing about the potential environmental impact of pumped storage but it does confirm that you are confusing the two technologies.

[mschuster91]

... which is why I linked to the Three Gorges Dam in the paragraph where I described the issues with dammed storage, and made an entirely separate paragraph describing the issues of pumped storage.

[pydry]

Thats exactly my point. You assumed they share the same environmental characteristics i.e. you're confusing them.

They do not: https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/articles/lower-environment...

(this is the second citation to a relevant scientific study in this thread. the first one was also mine)

This is getting to seem a bit like those screeds I see about wind farms killing all the birds from nuclear, oil and gas people who see it as a threat.

[genman]

Figure 2 doesn't agree with you. It's common but not geographically equally distributed.