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PUMPING HYDROELECTRIC STORAGE

Pumped hydroelectric storage facilities store energy in the form of water in an upper reservoir,
pumped from another reservoir at a lower elevation (Figure 1). During periods of high
electricity demand, power is generated by releasing the stored water through turbines in the
same manner as a conventional hydropower station. During periods of low demand (usually
nights or weekends when electricity is also lower cost), the upper reservoir is recharged by using
lower-cost electricity from the grid to pump the water back to the upper reservoir.

Reversible pump-turbine/motor-generator assemblies can act as both pumps and turbines.

Pumped storage stations are unlike traditional hydroelectric stations in that they are a net
consumer of electricity, due to hydraulic and electrical losses incurred in the cycle of pumping
from lower to upper reservoirs. However, these plants are typically highly efficient (round-trip
efficiencies reaching greater than 80%) and can prove very beneficial in terms of
balancing load within the overall power system. Pumped-storage facilities can be very
economical due to peak tand off-peak price differentials and their potential to provide critical
ancillary grid services.

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Pumped storage hydroelectric projects have been providing energy storage capacity
and transmission grid ancillary benefits in the United States (U.S.) and Europe since the
1920s.

Today, the 40 pumped- storage projects operating in the U.S. provide more than 20 GW, or
nearly 2 percent, of the capacity of the electrical supply system (Energy Information Admin,
2007). In 2009, the world’s pumped hydroelectric storage generating capacity was over 100 GW.

Pumped storage hydropower can provide energy-balancing, stability, storage capacity, and
ancillary grid services such as network frequency control and reserves. This is due to the ability
of pumped storage plants, like other hydroelectric plants, to respond to potentially large
electrical load changes within seconds. Pumped storage historically has been used to balance
load on a system, enabling large nuclear or thermal generating sources to operate at peak
efficiencies.

A pumped storage project would typically be designed to have 6 to 20 hours of hydraulic

reservoir storage for operation at. By increasing plant capacity in terms of size and number of
units, hydroelectric pumped storage generation can be concentrated and shaped to match
periods of highest demand, when it has the greatest value.

Pumped storage projects also provide ancillary benefits such as firming capacity and reserves
(both incremental and decremental), reactive power, black start capability, and spinning
reserve.

In the generating mode, the turbine-generators can respond very quickly to frequency
deviations just as conventional hydro generators can, thus adding to the overall balancing and
stability of the grid. In both turbine and pump modes, generator-motor excitation can be varied
to contribute to reactive power load and stabilize voltage. When neither generating nor
pumping, the machines can be also be operated in synchronous condenser mode, or can be
operated to provide spinning reserve, providing the ability to quickly pick up load or balance
excess generation.

Grid-scale pumped storage can provide this type of load-balancing benefit for time spans ranging
from seconds to hours with the digitally controlled turbine governors and large water reservoirs
for bulk energy storage.

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Conclusions and Observations

In the U.S., the existing 38 pumped hydroelectric facilities can store just over 2 percent of the
country’s electrical generating capacity. That share is small compared with Europe’s (nearly 5%)
and Japan’s (about 10%). But the industry plans to build reservoirs close to existing power
plants. Enough projects are being considered to double capacity. (Scientific American 2012)

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF HYDROPOWER

The power of falling water has been used to produce electricity for over 135 years.

Some of the earliest innovations in using water power were conceived in China during the
Han Dynasty between 202 BC and 9 AD. Trip hammers powered by the vertical -set water
wheel were used to pound and hull grain, break ore, and in early paper-making.

The availability of water power has long been closely associated with kick-starting
economic growth. When Richard Arkwright set up Cromford Mill in England’s Derwent
valley in 1771 to spin cotton and so set up one of the world’s first factory systems,
hydropower was the energy source he used.

Indeed, he was so convinced of the benefits of hydro that when he started using a steam
engine six years later, he used it to pump water into the mill pond rather than to drive
machinery directly. His enterprise quickly spread throughout the valley, and the massive
industrial buildings that he set up still stand – in a world heritage site.

While hydropower was quickly overwhelmed in the relatively flat English landscape by coal -
fired steam engines and, later, electricity generation – it was hydropower that set the
country’s industrial revolution running. In many regions of the world, hydropower has
played an equally major role in increasing and transforming development.

TURBINES

Some of the key developments in hydropower technology happened in the first half of the
19th century. In 1827, French engineer Benoit Fourneyron developed a turbine capable of
producing around 6 horsepower – the earliest version of the Fourneyron reaction turbine.

In 1849, British–American engineer James Francis developed the first modern water
turbine – the Francis turbine – which remains the most widely-used water turbine in the
world today.

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In the 1870s, American inventor Lester Allan Pelton developed the Pelton wheel, an impulse
water turbine, which he patented in 1880.

Into the 20th century, Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan developed the Kaplan turbine in
1913 – a propeller-type turbine with adjustable blades.

The first generation

The world’s first hydroelectric project was used to power a single lamp in the Cragside
country house in Northumberland, England, in 1878. Four years later, the first plant to
serve a system of private and commercial customers was opened in Wisconsin, USA, and
within a decade, hundreds of hydropower plants were in operation.

In North America, hydropower plants were installed at Grand Rapids, Michigan (1880),
Ottawa, Ontario (1881), Dolgeville, New York (1881), and Niagara Falls, New York (1881).
They were used to supply mills and light some local buildings.

By the turn of the 20 th century the technology was spreading round the globe, with
Germany producing the first three-phase hydro-electric system in 1891, and Australia
launching the first publicly owned plant in the Southern Hemisphere in 1895.

In 1895, the world’s largest hydroelectric development of the time, the Edward Dean
Adams Power Plant, was created at Niagara Falls.

In 1905, a hydroelectric station was built on the Xindian creek near Taipei, with an installed
capacity of 500 kW. This was quickly followed by the first station in mainland China, the
Shilongba plan in the Yunnan province, which was built in 1910 and put into operation in
1912. Upon completion Shilongba had an installed capacity of 480 kW – today it is still in
operation with an installed capacity of 6 MW.

In the first half of the 20 th century, the USA and Canada led the way in hydropower
engineering. At 1,345 MW, the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River became the world’s

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largest hydro-electric plant in 1936, surpassed by the Grand Coulee Dam (1,974 MW at the
time, 6,809 MW today) in Washington in 1942.

From the 1960s through to the 1980s, large hydropower developments were carried out in
Canada, the USSR, and Latin America.

Over the last few decades, Brazil and China have become world leaders in hydropower. The
Itaipu Dam, straddling Brazil and Paraguay, opened in 1984 at 12,600 MW (it has since been
enlarged and uprated to 14,000 MW), and is today only eclipsed in size by the 22,500 MW
China Three Gorges Dam, which opened in 2008.

Hydropower today

Into the 21 st century, hydropower continues to catalyse growth around the world. For
example, it has played a key role in transforming Brazil into the seventh largest country by
GDP in 2012; not least through a period of very rapid economic growth between 2000 and
2010, which saw its increase in (nominal GDP) value only outpaced by the USA and China.

This was only possible with the massive increases in electricity output that have been
delivered by its investment in hydropower. In 2010, Brazil produced 349,000 GWh of
electricity, and by 2011 this had increased by 40 per cent to 489,000 GWh. Remarkably,
just 2 per cent of this energy came from imports, and around 80 per cent from hydropower.

The result is a very modern fleet of very large hydropower stations – of which at least 24
are rated at 500 MW or above. Brazil has made the most of its rich hydrological resource
to transform itself into a leader on the world stage, keep costs down and maintain its
energy independence from the rest of the world.

This is just one example of the massive stimulus to economic growth that hydropower can
provide; as we look towards the future the technology has a huge role to play in bringing
growth and prosperity to the developing world.