Pumped water storage for the home

Wouldn't be efficient. You're probably better off with a battery or heating something up. The pump alone will eat most of the power, then the conversion from falling water back to electricity will have some losses too.

It could be a neat experiment but I wouldn't expect to be putting the power companies out of business with this method

1-3 gallons of water per person per day

>>1084149
To drink perhaps.

>Hydro electric

PE = MGH

Average household uses 30 kwh a day. That's 108000000 joules.

Let's assume your water storage is 10 meters off the ground.

You would need a water storage of a little over a million gallons. Almost 2 olympic swimming pool's worth. That's before you add in the extremely lossy conversions.

Such things are only logical on the extreme scale.

>>1084156

Well turns out I did the math wrong, but it's still a stupid amount.

Unrelated, but I've been to that pumped storage plant. They have an overlook at the top of it and the overhead pictures do not do justice to how massive it is.

A quick google search has a few people playing around with some numbers. They figure you can get about a 1000 watts out of it in about an hour, but that is going through 5000 gallons of water!

This seems like a good energy storage setup in a shtf scenario where batteries wouldn't last forever.

>>1084417
Batterys don't last forever. But you can store empty lead acid batterys forever. And sulfuric acid forever pretty much. From there you could just mix rain water or make or find your own distilled water.

>>1084427
No shit?! That's some info I neglected to learn. Thanks.

>>1084143
economies of scale.
You need huge volumes of water and a decent height difference to generate the pressure required. Otherwise you aren't going to get a useful amount of electricity.

Also you would need the perfect land to build one of these without a huge earth moving operation, otherwise you would never offset the initial cost.

File: shilo.jpg (24KB, 650x366px) Image search: [Google]

24KB, 650x366px

>>1084143
So you are suggesting a gravity battery but instead you pump water to store excess kinetic energy? Seen people do this at a camp with a weight on a string, two motors and a dried up well. Windmill would lift weight all day, then would slowly fall down to give light and fire starter at night.