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by bryanlarsen 44 days ago
Pumped hydro is currently the cheapest long term energy storage by a significant amount.
1 comments

not so cheap anymore when you want to add lot's of storage capacity
That's exactly when pumped hydro shines. Increasing the storage reservoir capacity is cheap. It's the turbines and infrastructure that's expensive, but that doesn't change if you're only increasing the capacity.
All the cheap storage reservoir capacity is already used - from where are you going to get more?
All the cheap storage capacity with natural flow have been taken.

Pumped hydro doesn't need natural flow, because it uses pumps. All it needs is a height differential. Here's 22,000 in Australia alone. There are millions worldwide.

https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/anu-stores-an-atlas-of-p...

so why hasn't the storage capacity not been taken?