Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
You were referring to the entire Columbia watershed, not Mica or Revelstoke; the Keenleyside Dam (like the nine others like it) isn't capable of producing the same power output.
Columbia's flow rate is 7,500 m³/s, Niagara, 5,796 m³/s; if we can turn one off, we can turn the other off. Fortunately, solar is so crap up near Mica/Revelstoke that it won't come to that.
This is the SkyTrain/Fraser Valley Express argument all over again. Given a choice between NaiKun and a similarly-priced wind farm on Tumbler Ridge, Victoria will likely go with NaiKun; offshore wind is stronger and much more consistent than onshore, so NK'll have more output and likely won't need Kemano at all.
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Mica and Revelstoke
are the Columbia (well not entirely, but Keenleyside and the others like it can be considered irrelevant, they're more for flow control as part of our treaty obligations than power generation.) I feel like you have this idea that you have to co-locate solar/wind with hydroelectric dams for the storage to make sense, but obviously we can power Vancouver with the output of the Peace River or the output of offshore wind so that's a moot point. In British Columbia electricity is electricity. If the wind/solar generation is part of the grid, you can reduce the demand for hydroelectricity and reduce the flow through our hydroelectric dams regardless of where they are in the province.
FYI there's no such thing as similarly priced onshore and offshore wind. Offshore wind is much hard to justify economically. Even if it was it's still not an on-demand source. There's no such thing as ramping up output. So it still can and should work in tandem with our hydroelectricity dams to let the dams hold back water for higher demand periods.
(Also did you stop for a moment to think about the fact that the flow rate of the Columbia is 25% more than the flow rate of the Niagara? We have so much water it's a shame to waste it.)
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