2 Comments

The water that flows to Los Angeles from the Owens Valley is 100% gravity fed. When a mountain got in the way they used closed pipe and created syphons. That is the case there.

In my case, we have a well and 100% of my water is pumped in gray pipes.

Expand full comment
author

There is a lot of water that gets pumped uphill from northern california to southern california. Total energy per year is about 6,000 gigawatt to pump water. https://water.ca.gov/What-We-Do/Power Total usage of power in California is about 260,000 gigawatt. So about 2.3 % of Californias energy usage goes to pumping water around. Annual power generated by California hydropower is about 21,000 gigawatt. https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/renewables_data/hydro/index_cms.php . So about 1/3 of Californias generated hydropower goes to pumping water around California.

Expand full comment