this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
263 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
75258 readers
3690 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
All hydro is automatically "time shifting storage" when new solar is added to power the daytime. Just turn on the turbines at evening peak full blast, and at night. Average global capacity factor of hydro is 45% because the water reservoir is not sufficient to go full blast 24/7/365. Obviously, hydro time shifting is also highly complementary to wind.
Hoover dam’s water release schedule is driven by requests from water rightsholders further downstream. Power generation is great, but the dam’s primary design purpose has always been facilitating agricultural irrigation.
That said, I bet you’re right that the water flow rate could be varied throughout each day to help balance electric grid needs. I assume that will likely come into play as we get further along the path to intermittent green power generation.
Flooding levels updam is a concern (but not for Hoover) in general. Yes, daily/weekly flow rate downstream is also a concern. But not hourly flow rate.