Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

Re:Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on? by davedx on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @07:11AM (#22179641)

> it seems unreasonable to store enormous amounts of renewable energy in a device that itself has to be replaced after a certain number of cycles. The device used for pumped energy storage -- a tank (to simplify greatly) -- basically never needs to be replaced.

It's a fair point but I think that you oversimplify the pumped hydro case. Pumped hydro also has quite some electronic components (turbines/motors), electronics, and other moving parts (valves, overflows). I can imagine some of these components require semi-regular maintenance (hence the maintenance shaft in the diagram on the website of OP).

You'd really have to run the numbers to see which costs more to maintain in the long term.

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Re:Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on? by jlevers on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @10:40AM (#22181692)

That's a good point. I think it seems likely that given the relatively larger storage capacity per unit[0] with pumped hydro vs. batteries, that the overall maintenance costs -- including the environmental costs of materials needed -- would be lower, but you're absolutely right that we'd have to do the math to know for sure.

[0]When I say "per unit," I just mean that a huge battery is made up of many cells that will need to be replaced individually, whereas large pumped hydro facilities are still only a small number of total reservoirs.

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Re:Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on? by auiya on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @01:17PM (#22183922)

There IS the cost of maintaining pumps systems too, which isn't terrible, but it's not zero either.

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