The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

both are terribly inefficient mechanisms but the pumping water option requires reservoirs. If solar in CA, the power generation part tends to tend to be hot and arid places. The reservoirs would be close by. The vertically lower reservoirs would become like the Salton Sea - saline and chucky full of agricultural runoff so it wouldn’t be a simple matter of pumping freshwater uphill during the day and letting it run down gravitational gradient thru generators at night. Environmental, & consequently engineering, problems will arise. Wouldn’t be as big a problem for places with wind like east of SF but then the land is probably more expensive and there would be different flavors of environmental concerns