this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Is it just a matter of not being worth it? I see cooling towers releasing what appears to be a ton of steam, pretty high up. If that steam were captured at the top and allowed to condense, wouldn't that result in a ton of water with a lot of gravitational potential energy? That water could then be released and used to power water turbines. Maybe I'm overestimating the amount of water being released as steam, or underestimating how much is needed to spin a water turbine to get a meaningful result, but it seems like wasted energy to me.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'd guess because it does not produce enough power to justify the cost of creating the condenser/turbine, otherwise, they probably would have.