this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
108 points (97.4% liked)

Science

22943 readers
17 users here now

Welcome to Hexbear's science community!

Subscribe to see posts about research and scientific coverage of current events

No distasteful shitposting, pseudoscience, or COVID-19 misinformation.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

To make solar power viable, we need a solution for overnight energy storage.

Batteries are complicated.

Do you know what isn't? Water go up. stonks-up

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] AmericaDelendaEst@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

yeah but in this case it's just a pipe and a turbine it's gotta make move

And you'd still need to make a saltwater lake somewhere uphill.

water tanks tho

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 14 points 2 months ago

Saltwater damages turbine blades very fast. Using saltwater would require some very different engineering for the turbine blades, which might not be worth the benefit of being able to use saltwater.

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 8 points 2 months ago

Turbines are precision machines. And if we're talking utility scale installations here, we want an upper reservoir measured in thousands of cubic meters, not liters.

[–] Farvana@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 months ago

The pipe and turbine would break so fast it's basically useless. Also, tanks are waaaay more expensive than digging a hole in the ground.

There's good reasons why freshwater open reservoirs are used. If tanks and brine were usable, people already would be using them.