PG&E has many lakess and water reseviors for storing water. The water is then released and creates electricty/hydroelectric power. At night when people aren't using the electricty they pump the water back up hill to so it can be used over and over. These resivor levels can vary 3 or 4 feet in one afternoon when electricity demands are high.
If I Google "PG&E pumped storage" all the references I get seem to be to a single pumped storage system called Helms. Why don't the others show up? Are they not actually owned by PG&E?
He is confusing pumped storage with hydro.
PG&E has many energy storage reservoirs in California. Helms is just one of many.
Most have not looked too hard. All did was look on PG&E's web site to see they list over 100 energy storage reservoirs in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. And their web site states there are 67 powerhouses and collectively provide clean, green, non-polluting renewable electricity to over 4,000,000 homes.
Any idea why he thinks the power compnaies don't have energy storage? They sure as heck do.
But do they pump water back up stream to store energy or are they just using runoff that fills the reservior?
They have both.
Obviously the rain filled resivors are huge and have a much larger capacity than these smaaler holding resiveors. It might take days or weeks for the water level in large resivors to drop a foot. But the holding resivors in one day the water level might change 3 or 4 feet in one day.
One also need to remember many of these resivors pre-date electricity. They are located in the Sierra foothills of Californa whihc was gold country. These resiviors were initially buil for hydrolic gold mining, ice (blocks of ice were cut and sent to San Francisco for refrigeration, and for drinking water/agriculture. It would be another 60 - 100 years before these resivors would be used for produceing electricity.
Bottom line...... These smaller resivors are used like batteries to store energy which can be easily converted to electrity by opening a value. As the water level in the resivors are drained they can be recharged by pumping water, which was used to produce electrity during the day, back into the resivor.
The amount of electricity stored in these rechargable resivors is very inexpensive and environmentaly friendly compared to the chemial energy stored in batteries. And unlike batteries the resiviors are beatuiful lakes which provide drinking water, fishing, boating, camping etc. All somthing you can't do with a battery.
And these lakes also provide drinking water