Unaweep Canyon - hydro plant being proposed

Not only is it not frictionless, moving power over power lines isnt efficient.

tom donnellywrote:

Those are different due to using traditional dams that have a large impact on a river valley.   Lower impact sites do not dam up an entire valley; they just have 2 manmade deep ponds.

I was referring strictly to the pumped storage/power generation aspect, not it's implementation.

Chris Michalowskiwrote:

This isn't a dam.  It's not flooding a river valley.   It's a liquid battery that is charged from renewable energy and dispatched when renewables aren't available. Battery storage is a requirement if we're going to move off of fossil fuels so we stop cooking the planet. 

To provide storage to power things like hospitals, grocery stores and all the other things that we take for granted requires infrastructure. If we don't want infrastructure it means we live in the dark and drink warm beer. Power just doesn't miraculously happen to appear when you want to flip on the light switch.

The largest battery that we have in Colorado is only 4 MW with a 4 hour dispatch time.  This project would produce 800 MW for 8-10 hours on a nightly basis and doesn't require a shit ton of lithium or other mined materials.

 I would argue aridification and wildfire risks due to climate change are much bigger threats to Unaweep than this project which is trying to mitigate those things.

Tom (incorrectly) made the comparison between generation by Glen Canyon Dam and pumped storage. In that regard, the Bureau of Reclamation website states that annual generation by GCD is 5 GWh. High Country News states that, last year, it was 3 GWh. Tom said “3,000 KW-hr,” which is 1,000 times less than 3 GWh.

I agree that global warming must be arrested immediately and that battery storage is important to augment solar and wind power. I agree that mining, manufacturing, and disposal of the materials required for chemical batteries are toxic. I think also that electricity usage can be reduced by society to a degree much greater than Xcel’s proposed project may generate.

Electricity generated by Hoover Dam/Lake Mead enabled Las Vegas to waste much of it on the Strip. GCD has been a part of the enabling of electricity waste in the Southwest. Most of the electricity generated by Xcel’s proposed project will also be wasted unless society changes its ways. The project could be unnecessary if we consume less electricity — and fossil fuel.

The is also true for water consumption. Denver and other Front Range cities have been diverting water from the Colorado River Basin for many decades. And more diversion is in the works. If those cities stopped wasting water on Kentucky bluegrass, as SoCal has been forced to do in recent years, more diversion would be unnecessary. 

My point comparing this type of pumped hydro to Glen Canyon is correct.  I corrected my typo above, which was obvious if you read the HCN article, which says "Last year, Glen Canyon was down to just 3,000 gigawatt hours."   So it generated about the same amount of power as a pumped hydro making 1 GW x 10 hrs/day  x 365 days per year  =  3650 GW-hr.  (1 GW is a nice round number).  Subtracting some since the pumped hydro won't be run 100%, would make them both roughly 3000 GW-hrs.    Even if the pumped hydro is only used to 25% of capacity, it would generate 1/3 of the recent power of Lake Powell,  Yet Lake Powell has 1000 times as much surface area, so the evaporation is about 1000 times as high, when full, and it's in a hotter climate.  Making its water loss somewhere around 350 times as high per GW-hr generated.  

And the pumped hydro ponds could be partly or mostly covered. governing.com/archive/gov-s…

Also many giant reservoirs like Lake Powell are getting so low in water that they may not be able to generate much power in the future.

Austin Donisanwrote:

Maybe you should spend 5 seconds looking at what the project is instead of making a competely unrelated comment?

Sorry. I was thinking in general terms. I feel the public appetite for any proposals with "hydro" is a non-starter. It doesn't matter how good the proposal is. I think people would be scared to try anything that use's water. Kind of the way I feel nuclear energy has got a bad reputation. People hear the word nuclear and they want nothing to do with it. 

Update - Xcel has pulled their application.

https://coloradosun.com/2022/11/02/xcel-energy-ends-plan-for-unaweep-canyon-hydropower-project/?mc_cid=aa6d8a6b06&mc_eid=f7007f4649

Great news!

Thanks for the update.

ErikaNWwrote:

Update - Xcel has pulled their application.

https://coloradosun.com/2022/11/02/xcel-energy-ends-plan-for-unaweep-canyon-hydropower-project/?mc_cid=aa6d8a6b06&mc_eid=f7007f4649

Because it was a bad idea, not for lack of pushing it forward nevertheless.

I went camping in Unaweep near the ruins in March of '76.

It was the only building in the canyon at the time.

Nobody drove through that night.

As far as I'm concerned Unaweep was ruined decades ago.

Ron Cloudwalkerwrote:

I went camping in Unaweep near the ruins in March of '76.

It was the only building in the canyon at the time.

Nobody drove through that night.

As far as I'm concerned Unaweep was ruined decades ago.

June 2021,

Went climbing all day in Uni. Never saw another party or heard a car drive by.

As far as I’m concerned Unaweep is still a great place. 

Unaweep is an awsome place. I'll never forget the first time I saw it and was amazed there was nobody there. At all.