Federal regulators have just completed a final environmental assessment for a major hydro energy project 35 miles east of Rawlins, Wyoming.<\/p>\n
The site is the Seminoe Reservoir, and the plan involves carving into the mountain to install a power plant<\/strong>. But that’s not all: a brand-new lake above the basin is also on the cards.<\/p>\n How are construction crews going to engineer this body of water to feed the hydroelectric facility? And why must the entire system refill every 24 hours?<\/p>\n Central Wyoming’s Seminoe Reservoir on the North Platte River was built by the Bureau of Reclamation decades ago. It has steep granite cliffs along one edge and limber pine trees on another. It is an important part of the region’s water management strategy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n A new utility installation is being proposed that would cover 1,900 acres of federal and privately owned land around the reservoir basin. The Bureau of Land Management would have the job of overseeing the public acreage, with local conservation boards tracking the soil conditions and animal habitats.<\/p>\n There are already miles of overhead transmission lines installed in the mountain passes to deliver power to towns many miles away. But grid operators have a problem, and it comes down to wind farms. Wyoming is covered with turbines, and the power generated is tremendous. However, regional utilities are lacking the infrastructure needed for electricity storage<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The surplus energy has nowhere to go when power is flowing, but the demand is low.<\/p>\n In Wyoming, the wind blows strongest in the nighttime. But this is when both commercial and household power usage are at their lowest. It is a timing mismatch that forces grid managers to throttle the supply by limiting the turbine action. The other strategy is dumping surplus energy<\/a> at discounted rates, which is a serious waste of power and a source of missed revenue<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It is not a simple undertaking. The installation will need to function on land widely used by herds of pronghorn, wintering elk, nesting raptors, and downstream trout fisheries<\/a> with the absolute minimum disturbance. <\/p>\n Intense federal environmental reviews assessed the potential impact on the wildlife against the physical requirements<\/strong> of the energy project. It would not be a light footprint. Filling a new reservoir would mean taking 10,000 acre-feet of water from the existing Seminoe Reservoir.<\/p>\n This volume would be reused continuously, only requiring around 300 acre-feet of “makeup” water a year to top up what gets lost to sun and wind evaporation.<\/p>\n Still, engineering an elevated storage basin<\/a> up a granite slope requires a complex geological strategy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Engineers’ plans involve blasting an upper basin into a natural rock depression 1,000 feet above Seminoe Reservoir and 10,000 feet to the east. The new lake will be connected by subterranean tunnels to a powerhouse in the granite.<\/p>\n The Seminoe Pumped Storage Project<\/a> concept is a giant closed-loop battery. At night when demand is low, the cheap excess wind power will be used to pump water up the mountain<\/strong> to the new basin. When demand peaks in the daytime, gravitational forces will release the water back down via underground turbines. Expected output is 972 megawatts.<\/p>\n The nature of the closed-loop system means that water loss is minimized. But the construction process will take a serious toll on the environment. Building will take between four and five years to complete. Soil and pine stands will be disturbed.<\/p>\n Federal licensing from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission<\/a> comes with mandatory mitigation measures to protect the movement of big game through long-established migration corridors<\/a>. There are also trout streams nearby, which have to be protected before workers are allowed to break ground<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Once again, it comes down to balancing the value of clean power for human needs with environmental costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Federal regulators have just completed a final environmental assessment for a major hydro energy project 35 miles east of Rawlins, Wyoming. The site is the Seminoe Reservoir, and the plan involves carving into the mountain to install a power plant. But that’s not all: a brand-new lake above the basin is also on the cards. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":31558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"hydro","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"Wyoming wants to hollow a hydroelectric plant into a mountain and build a lake above it that refills the system every night. How will the system work?","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Seminoe Reservoir’s place in a grid saturated with wind power<\/h2>\n
Moving energy around an active ecosystem<\/h2>\n
Functioning like a closed-loop battery<\/h2>\n
Minimizing water loss, but at the cost of the environment<\/h3>\n