Oroville Dam Spillway, February 2017 BBC: Oroville Dam risk: Evacuated not allowed home immediately In my opinion, yes, we should risk new big dam projects world-wide. New pumped-storage hydro schemes are needed for energy storage to back-up intermittent renewable energy generators, such as wind turbines, in the cleanest, greenest possible way. (Cleaner than bio-mass burning though requiring more capital expenditure and investment, admittedly.) The main problem with the Oroville Dam is a poorly designed and constructed spillway system. There's no reason to assume that in future, the best project managers would make such a poor job of designing and building our big dam projects. My proposed more powerful Strathdearn Pumped-Storage Hydro Scheme has some similarities to the Oroville-Thermalito Hydro-electric Power Complex. The 2 Dams (Strathdearn & Oroville) would be about the same size. The Strathdearn Dam could be built as high as 300m high x 2000 m long The Oroville Dam is 230m high x 2100 m long The impounded reservoirs would coincidentally be the same volume of 4.4 km3. Both schemes feature a power canal. The Strathdearn power canal would be much wider, longer and the flow rate 100 times higher, up to 51,000 m3/s The Thermalito power canal is tiny by comparison with a small flow rate of only 430 m3/s (By comparison, the maximum flow rates we have seen thundering down the Oroville Dam Spillway in recent days of 100,000 cfs = 2830 m3/s, are only about 1/18th of the maximum flow through the mighty Strathdearn Power Canal) The Strathdearn scheme could be powerful enough to serve all of Britain's needs for energy storage and the needs of some of our European neighbours too. The UK peak demand is about 55GW but the Strathdearn power capacity could be super-sized to supply up to 180GW - that's plenty for future expansion needs too. The Oroville-Thermalito complex supplies only about 1GW. That's very little in comparison to what Strathdearn could supply. So although the 2 dams - Oroville VS Strathdearn - are roughly the same size and the water impounded the same volume, the flows of water are very much more powerful in the Strathdearn scheme. Although the Oroville Dam is the biggest dam in the US, the Oroville-Thermalito hydroelectric scheme is a modest scheme when considered next to the colossal scale of the Strathdearn Pumped-Storage Hydro Scheme. If you can promote your hydroelectric scheme when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on the weather If you can trust your science when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too STRATHDEARN PUMPED-STORAGE HYDRO SCHEME (up to 180 GW / 6,800 GWh) World’s biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme, for Scotland?
All clear!... Evacuees from California dam can return home, sheriff says Tue Feb 14, 2017 | Californians who were ordered to evacuate due to a threat from the tallest dam in the United States can now safely return to their homes and businesses may resume operations, a county sheriff said on Tuesday.
