from Hacker News

New England's Largest Battery Is Hidden Inside a Mass. Mountain (2016)

by johnobrien1010 on 5/25/22, 9:15 PM with 49 comments

• by gwbas1c on 5/26/22, 1:45 AM

  I went inside that in the mid-1990s when I was a teenager. It was really cool. I had no idea where I was going, too. My dad just walked up to me and asked me if I wanted to go for a drive, and didn't say anything. Suddenly, he randomly pulled off of Rt 2 and followed a country road in the woods.

  We pulled into the visitor's center, outside of the mountain. He often took the family to things like this because he worked for the power company, so I just thought we were stopping at a place that he heard of at work. Then we got into a bus and drove inside and took a tour.

  That was one of the coolest things I ever saw as a teenager.

• by tshaddox on 5/25/22, 10:56 PM

  Pumped-storage hydro is cool. I first became aware of it in 2005 when the catastrophic failure of this one in Missouri made local news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_...

  A section of the upper reservoir's dam wall was overtopped, the pumps continued to run, and the section failed, releasing a billion gallons of water in 12 minutes. The flow washed away the forest and soil down to the bedrock. One home was destroyed and its occupants injured, though thankfully there were no deaths.

  The failure had several causes, but the most infamous one is that the failsafe gauge had been moved above the top of the dam wall to avoid false positives.

  The reservoir was repaired and as far as I know continues to operate. I backpacked in the area several times and the dam wall has a striking appearance on the horizon.

• by 908B64B197 on 5/25/22, 10:17 PM

  > Since the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant shut down two years ago, Northfield has been buying its off-peak operating power straight off the grid. But as more solar and wind comes online, Bakas believes the pumped storage generating station could one day run as a totally climate-friendly supplier of electricity.

  > "I think the goal of our facility would be to look at the opportunities to purchase purely green, renewable power and be able to supply green power to the grid," he says.

  So right now it's fueled by... gas and coal.

  They could just buy clean, green energy from up north (if lobbyists hadn't killed the project). [0]

  [0] https://apnews.com/article/election-2021-maine-hydropower-li...

• by juice_bus on 5/25/22, 10:09 PM

  Tom Scott also did a great video[0] on this

  [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jx_bJgIFhI

• by ZeroGravitas on 5/26/22, 8:23 AM

  Quoting Wikipedia:

  > Engineering studies for the plant began in October 1964, with early site preparation starting three years later. In 1972 its 1,168 megawatts (1,566,000 hp) hydroelectric plant became operational as the largest such facility in the world.[citation needed] The facility was built to balance the supply from the nearby Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.[3]

  A very common reason for building these historically.

• by moron4hire on 5/25/22, 11:30 PM

  >> This facility here is capable of just under 1,200 megawatts

  Damn. Just a little more and they'd be making "1.21 gigawatts, Marty!"

• by rektide on 5/25/22, 9:49 PM

  $10m project. What one would expect, pumped hydro:

  > Northfield Mountain is a naturalist's wonderland. But if you look around, you'll see an unnatural site: a 5-billion-gallon battery.

  Energy capacity: 5b gallons * 8.35lbs/gallon * kWh/2,655,220ft-lb (pounds raised 1 ft) = 15.6MWh per foot raised or lowered. At $10m, that's a ridiculous amount of capacity.

• by aaaaaaaaaaab on 5/25/22, 9:49 PM

  Spoiler: it's a pumped hydroelectric storage.

• by dtgriscom on 5/26/22, 1:24 AM

  > Gravity and powerful pumps force the water down to the hydro plant carved into Northfield Mountain.

  ... uh, no. Pumps force the water up into the reservoir; gravity alone pulls the water back down and through the turbine-driven generators.

• by dwd on 5/26/22, 10:56 AM

  Australia is currently expanding the current 4.5GW Snowy Scheme built in the 50s with an additional 2GW of pumped hydro.

  https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/snowy-20/about/

• by ge96 on 5/25/22, 9:54 PM

  I wonder... What if you used a transparent container that utilized the sun to add pressure during the day while it's being used then pump it at night(cooler). Worth the effort for noticeable gain or no?

• by kkfx on 5/26/22, 5:56 AM

  The only issue is: you need water an mountains... They are not that rare, but definitively not enough for a full scale usage, we can and should use them when possible, but it does not suffice...