Re: “Hold lights on as Washington transitions to wash energy” [April 5, Opinion]:
The current editorial on vitality and the drought causes me to recommend the examine and hopefully use of pumped storage, which is the pumping of water again up over a dam to make use of in time of want — like evening — for hydroelectric. It’s achieved in different places.
On Could 8, 2022, California had 103% of its vitality produced from renewables however needed to hold fuel crops, which take hours to get began, working as a result of evening was coming. Typically photo voltaic panel farms should be turned off due to extra energy within the grid. The easy answer is hydro-storage. Washington is exclusive in our quantity of hydropower. Let’s use it to create extra energy once we want it.
The ability to do that would come from the photo voltaic panels on my and hundreds of properties plus different renewables in the course of the day when the renewables produce extra vitality. And extra photo voltaic properties are coming. No new transmission traces are wanted as a result of I’m on the identical grid because the 31 dams talked about within the editorial, lots of which don’t have fish issues. No new fuel crops or batteries wanted, just some pumps and pipes.
Hans Dunshee, Snohomish
