For Storing Electricity, Utilities are Turning to Pumped Hydro

Hydroelectric Power (Dams & Pumped Storage)

Date posted: 01/29/16

John Roach reports that utilities from Spain to China are increasingly relying on pumped storage hydroelectricity, first used in the 1890s to overcome the intermittent nature of wind and solar power. In the past decade, wind energy production has soared in Spain, rising from 6% of the electricity generation in 2004 to about 20% today. While that is certainly good news for boosters of renewables, the surge has come with the challenge of ensuring that electric power is available when customers want it, not just when the wind blows. To provide a back-up to wind energy production, Spain utilities have had to turn not to high-tech, 21st-century batteries, but rather to a time-tested 19th-century technology ... pumped storage hydroelectricity. Pumped storage facilities are typically equipped with pumps and generators that move water between upper and lower reservoirs. A basic setup uses excess electricity, generated from wind turbines during a blustery night to pump water from a lower reservoir, such as behind a dam, to a reservoir at a higher elevation. Then, when the wind ceases to blow or electricity demand spikes, the water from on high is released to spin hydroelectric turbines...as a base-load back-up. While much of the buzz around energy storage today centers on the development of innovative battery technologies, more than 98% of pumped storage hydropower is still the only method that is mature, reliable, and commercially available, like nuclear power. Installed storage capacity globally is, in fact, pumped to feed hydroelectric systems, according to Vladimir Koritarov, an energy systems engineer at the DOE Argonne National Lab in Illinois. And today, fueled by the increased deployment of solar and wind power to help combat global warming, pumped storage hydro is in the midst of a surge, with power generators and utilities building new facilities from Italy to China as a way of balancing supply and demand across power grids, as with nuclear power as well.