Environment & Energy

Pumped storage involves pumps.

Shutting off the turbines when the grid is oversupplied has been a practice in a de facto sense since the invention of hydroelectricity.

In some sense, hydroelectricity is probably the only sustainable form of so called "renewable energy," although dams, as demonstrated in Libya last week, and the far more disastrous Banqiao event in the 1970's in China, implies potentially huge risks but if I had my way, as a "free river" environmentalist, I'd minimize its use.

Given Banqiao, like some suppressed citizens of China, I question whether Three Gorges was a great idea, particularly in an era of extreme weather.