Can someone more well versed than I explain? If you have a dam full of water going through a generator/turbine and pumps to pump it back up. I understand you pump when electricity is cheap and generate when electricity is expensive and needed instantly but in reality is this workable? I have never seen an example of costs of building and generating against income? Yet we are happy to put up billions of dollars? Too much to hope for a guarantee that can be attributed if it does turn to custard.
I am still waiting for anyone to put up some sort of case for solar panels and wind? A real comparison, cost of installation against a yearly output of actual electricity? Then yearly output figures from then on but am I asking for an inconvenient truth?

LOUDmouth,

I disagree about what you THINK about water not being able to be compressed.

There are something like about 22 states of water. About 18 can be demonstrated in the lab with the rest by theory (these cannot be demonstrated in practice because the conditions cannot be attained in any lab eg pressures and temps beyond the achievable on earth).

Obviously you along with most of the people on The Forum OLO do not have any respect for the Arts which I find strange because Arts is all the things like history, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, philosophy, etc., that deals with all the sorts of topics that you all mostly like to talk about.

So what does this mean? It means that you along with the other usual suspects do not have any credentials in those areas so you are left to tell us what you think rather than what you know. How do I know this? Because I can ask you how you know something about a subject when you have no credentials in that area. You can only tell me what you think, not what you know.

I wish there was a qualified electrical engineer who could give some guidance on this topic as I feel no one on this thread knows what they are talking about. I certainly couldn't offer any technical expertise and I haven't seen anyone on this thread that actually has.

Dear snake,

You're saying " ………… I feel no one on this thread knows what they are talking about."

Isn't that the truth. And it doesn't stop with this thread. Just about everyone on The Forum OLO can only tell you what they think, not what they know. Reason: they don't have any credentials related to what they are discussing. It's the usual suspects, The Forum's Old Farts Club members, etc., etc.

Dear Critic,

«But if the government is going to carry on about climate change, give incentives to install rooftop solar, including buying it then spilling it then somethings seriously wrong.»

Government cannot do this unless people accept their offers for such "incentives". You do not even need to inform government when installing rooftop solar, but then if people are greedy, they have only themselves to blame!

Hey JBowder,

"Can someone more well versed than I explain? If you have a dam full of water going through a generator/turbine and pumps to pump it back up. I understand you pump when electricity is cheap and generate when electricity is expensive and needed instantly but in reality is this workable?"

I wasn't implying buying when cheap (to run pumps) and selling when demand is high.
- Though that may have its own merits.

I was simply saying that we shouldn't spill or purge the excess power in the grid as NSW and WA propose to do.
'Spend' that excess power running pumps that would refill the dams instead.

If you've got:

A/ Excess solar panel generation
B/ Dams that are low on water

Then:

C/ Use the excess power to refill the dams

Result:

D/ 'Spilled energy' becomes 'Stored energy'.