Michigan Has A Water Battery Where Water Flows Uphill?

I think it’s pretty common knowledge that water doesn’t regularly flow up and over anything, but when it comes to Michigan and ingenuity, there is a small pond off the shores of Lake Michigan as a giant battery where water actually flows uphill.

This isn’t a natural flow of course, as the Earth Observatory from NASA pointed out just exactly how the water is able to flow uphill...

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What Exactly IS This Small Pond?

Set on a bluff hundreds of feet above Lake Michigan, it also stores potential energy that can be unleashed to produce hydropower. This human-built lake is part of the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant, a pumped storage hydropower facility that can be likened to a giant battery—one that moves water instead of electrons.

How Does It Flow Uphill?

Surplus electricity from the grid is used to pump water 370 vertical feet (110 meters) from Lake Michigan to an upper reservoir, shown here. At times of higher energy demand, water flows back down, turning the pump-turbines in the opposite direction to generate hydropower.

I love the ingenuity of this project, but when I first heard that water was moving UP, I knew there was no way it was doing it naturally. This is just one of the ways Michigan is trying to lower its carbon footprint and a great natural way to produce that kind of energy.

Now all they need to do is install a giant tube that can just loop you up and nonstop all day, and they could keep money flowing into the project. Think about it, an endless water slide where you can live the rest of your days on the water. Please, just give me credit Ludington.