Hidden just underneath those clouds is the Grand Coulee Dam. Back in the 1930s when civil engineers who speak English still knew how to dream, they spammed as many GW scale dams across the country as they could manage. The Grand Coulee and Hoover Dams were the ultimate manifestation of this. Gigawatts of generation built during the Great Depression to spur the growth that was required for us to build our way out of the Great Depression. In the 70s, they further increased the Grand Coulee’s generating capacity to 7 GW, primarily to attract aluminum refineries to the region and to brace for the ever present Henry Adam’s curve. Then we dropped off the Henry Adam’s curve and Aluminum refining went overseas. Gone are the days of Kaiser building dams and the aluminum refineries to use their power, beautiful vertical buildout. Furthermore, unfortunately the civil engineers and managers forgot how to build great things quickly and only ~20% of the water in the Pacific Northwest is put through dams. We could well do with 5x as many dams! Though not all hope is lost! There’s far too much dirt in that image going completely unused and sooner rather than later we’ll tile it all with solar arrays and build many more majestic things. If only, like the engineers of years past, we remember that you can just build thins.