Letter: Integrate solar, hydropower technology to save/grow our reservoirs | Local-issues

I commend the thinking of the writer to this forum who implored our energy managers to cover our CAP canals with solar power facilities (SPFs). I’m proposing the use of similar technology to address that writer’s water-evaporation problem; our general “shrinking-reservoir” problem; and this so-called problem: some of the harvested solar energy must be stored for use when sunshine is unavailable, and current energy-storage technology is inadequate to that need. I disagree that the latter problem exists. Current energy-production/storage technology can already meet our need for energy storage.

Float SPFs on top of our hydroelectric reservoirs. There positioned, they are near the dam, where the energy harvested by them is readily available for use in pumping water from the effluent side of the dam back into the reservoir (increasing the reservoir’s level). The energy used to drive the pumping of said water is stored as gravitational potential energy. This is high-capacity energy storage without the use of electric batteries.

Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.