We’re responding to recent letters in the Recorder about pumped storage and to the May 3 article about FirstLight’s FERC re-licensing application. On April 29, Richard Sansrom reminded us that pumped storage facilities were created to use an excess of power from Yankee Rowe and Vermont Yankee nuclear power plants. He suggested we use solar or other renewable energy to power those pumped storage facilities now. Clearly, we prefer renewable energy to climate-disrupting fossil fuels or forever-dangerous nuclear power, but what we really want is to shut down the pumped storage facilities. Here’s why:
Pumped storage facilities waste energy: Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage generates 1 million megawatt hours per year using fossil fuels. To pump that much water to the top of the mountain requires 1.3 million MWh/year. So, there is a net loss of 300,000 megawatt hours per year. The average home in the United States uses 10 MWh/yr. In New England, we use less. The wasted energy in pumping losses would power more than 30,000 homes.
Pumped storage facilities disrupt the river: NMPS creates daily “tides” of over three feet on a large section of the Connecticut River. Sometimes, Northfield’s “tide” can vary by as much as nine feet. When that huge amount of water is sucked up, it destroys fish and other animals. All of that water getting sucked up the mountain or charging back down the mountain causes serious riverbank erosion. Northfield’s giant water appetite is why there is so often a 2.7 mile section of mostly-dry riverbed below the Turners Falls dam. That dry stretch is why so few American shad and sea lamprey have made it upstream beyond Turners Falls these last 40 years.
Our opinion:
Yes, to more solar, wind and other renewable energy.
No, to pumped storage.
Mary McClintock
Conway
Jim Smethurst
Deerfield
Alden Booth
Gill
Sally Shaw
Gill
Janet Masucci
Gill