[Scottish Scientist (OP)]

Oroville Dam Spillway, February 2017
BBC: Oroville Dam risk: Evacuated not allowed home immediately

In my opinion, yes, Britain should risk a new big dam project or two.

New pumped-storage hydro schemes are needed for energy storage to back-up intermittent renewable energy generators, such as wind turbines, in the cleanest, greenest possible way. (Cleaner than bio-mass burning though requiring more capital expenditure and investment, admittedly.)

The main problem with the Oroville Dam is a poorly designed and constructed spillway system. There's no reason to assume that Britain would make such a poor job of designing and building our big dam projects.

My proposed more powerful Strathdearn Pumped-Storage Hydro Scheme has some similarities to the Oroville-Thermalito Hydro-electric Power Complex.

The 2 Dams (Strathdearn & Oroville) would be about the same size.

Strathdearn could be built as high as 300m high x 2000 m long
The Oroville Dam is 230m high x 2100 m long

The impounded reservoirs would coincidentally be the same volume of 4.4 km3.

Both schemes feature a power canal.

The Strathdearn power canal would be much wider, longer and the flow rate 100 times higher, up to 51,000 m3/s
The Thermalito power canal is tiny by comparison with a small flow rate of only 430 m3/s

(By comparison, the maximum flow rates we have seen thundering down the Oroville Dam Spillway in recent days of 100,000 cfs = 2830 m3/s, are only about 1/18th of the maximum flow through the mighty Strathdearn Power Canal)

The Strathdearn scheme could be powerful enough to serve all of Britain's needs for energy storage and the needs of some of our European neighbours too.

The UK peak demand is about 55GW but the Strathdearn power capacity could be super-sized to supply up to 180GW - that's plenty for future expansion needs too.

The Oroville-Thermalito complex supplies only about 1GW. That's very little in comparison to what Strathdearn could supply.

So although the 2 dams - Oroville VS Strathdearn - are roughly the same size and the water impounded the same volume, the flows of water are very much more powerful in the Strathdearn scheme.

Although the Oroville Dam is the biggest dam in the US, the Oroville-Thermalito hydroelectric scheme is a modest scheme when considered next to the colossal scale of the Strathdearn Pumped-Storage Hydro Scheme.

If you can promote your hydroelectric scheme when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on the weather
If you can trust your science when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too

STRATHDEARN PUMPED-STORAGE HYDRO SCHEME (up to 180 GW / 6,800 GWh)



World’s biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme, for Scotland?

[chris]

Have there been any further developments on this?

[Bored chemist]

What's the carbon footprint of the methane produced when the buried vegetation rots?

[chris]

What's the carbon footprint of the methane produced when the buried vegetation rots?

I thought you were going to say "the concrete to build it".

[Bored chemist]

What's the carbon footprint of the methane produced when the buried vegetation rots?

I thought you were going to say "the concrete to build it".

I was saving that question for an encore- along with one about the cost of materials vs the cost of compensating the locals.

[chris]

I suspected as much!

Although, in a conversation we had on the Naked Scientists with climate change mitigation specialist Doug Crawford Brown, we acknowledged a recent paper showing that the carbon draw down as concrete cures over about half a century following its hydration, corresponds to about 40% of the initial carbon footprint.