Renewable Energy 155 (2020) 547e554

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

The water-energy-climate nexus concept of “Hydrobattery”: Storing

excess Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) at the Canyon Ferry Dam
Stergios Vakalis a, *, Konstantinos Kaffas b, Konstantinos Moustakas c
a
Department of Environment, University of the Aegean, University Hill, 81100, Mytilene, Greece
b
Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza Universita
5, 39100, Bolzano, Italy
c
National Technical University of Athens, School of Chemical Engineering, Unit of Environmental Science & Technology, 9 Iroon Polytechniou Str., Zographou
Campus, GR-15780, Athens, Greece

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Hydropower is the renewable energy with the highest power production worldwide. At the same time
Received 26 January 2020 the output flow of the water that is being used for hydroelectric power production can fluctuate
Received in revised form significantly. The ability to “recharge” the dams with water from excess variable renewable energy
19 March 2020
technologies (VRE) can be used for storage and as a buffer for smoothing the production peaks of VRE.
Accepted 29 March 2020
Available online 1 April 2020
This study presented the idea of the “Hydrobattery” scheme which combines the concepts of “open-
loop” and “closed-loop” pumped storage technologies along with the concept of energy storage and
water recirculation. The Canyon Ferry Dam was used as a case study and water was modelled to be
Keywords:
Hydropower
recirculating back to the Dam from the Helena Valley reservoir. The hydropower production from the
Pumped storage Canyon Ferry Dam is below the nominal value of 50 MW and has fluctuated from 34.74 MW up to
Various renewable energy (VRE) 41.46 MW for the period between 2014 and 2018. The application of “Hydrobattery” would be able to
Energy efficiency increase the power output by 2.39e3.39 MW of additional power, and an increase of power production
Climate change between 5.7% and 9.7%. Also, the concept of “Hydrobattery” can be used as a potential water manage-
Water management ment system for connected water reservoirs.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction potential that is estimated to be around 18.5 gCO2-eq/kWh [3]. The

According to the International Energy Agency, the global power
capacity of renewables electricity production was 2502 GW for the
year 2018 and is projected to increase by around 50%, i.e. 1220 GW,
by the year 2024 [1]. Offshore wind power and solar PV are ex-
pected to grow 3-fold and 2.5-fold due to the investments made by
China, European Union and the United States. Nonetheless, hy-
dropower is expected to remain the largest renewable energy
source and - in respect to the electrical production - is projected to
increase by 121 GW by the year 2024 [1]. In 2018, hydropower was
assessed to be 1292 GW worldwide, with an overall electricity
production of 4200 TWh. China is the biggest producer of hydro-
power with an installed power capacity of 352 GW, followed by
Brazil with 104 GW and the United States with 103 GW [2]. Expect,
hydropower being the largest renewable energy source, it is also a
technology with low carbon footprint and with an GHG emission
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: vakalis@aegean.gr (S. Vakalis).
two main types are the impoundment facilities, where the river-
water is stored in a reservoir that is enclosed by means of a dam,
and the diversion facilities (run-of-river) where a fraction of the
river-water is diverted to a canal [4].
“Hydro storage” or more commonly known as “pumped hydro
storage” is usually presented as a separate technology [4], although
one could argue that is a subcategory of impoundment hydropower
facilities. The primer principle behind pump storage is the use of
pumps for moving water uphill, i.e. to a reservoir with higher
elevation and excess produced energy can be stored as potential
energy in the elevated water. The ability of pumped storage to
temporarily store and reintroduce electricity to the grid provides
flexibility to the grid and assists the integration of other renewable
energy systems [5]. Canta ~o et al. [6] focused on the wind-hydro
integration by developing correlation maps for Brazil and reached
the conclusion that these maps can be useful for “operation and
expansion strategies”. The merging of wind power and hydropower
has been also the focus of several modelling studies whether the
focus has been the geographic optimization [7], the energy gener-
ation potential [8] or the overall impacts [9]. Recent studies have

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.179
0960-1481/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
548 S. Vakalis et al. / Renewable Energy 155 (2020) 547e554
Nomenclature
h efficiency factor
h [85% / 94%] efficiency factors from 85% to 94%
[monthi - yeari] indicator for a given month and year
Ep potential energy (J)
Ep e added added potential energy due to “Hydrobattery” (J)
g acceleration of gravity (m/s2)
h height of elevation (m)
hmax maximum elevation of water (m)
m mass (kg)
mmax maximum mass (kg)
M.A.D. maximum available discharge (m3)
Pel electrical power (W)
Pextra extra electrical power due to “Hydrobattery” (W)
Pw Power of water (W)
Pw e added additional power of water due to “Hydrobattery”
(W)
t time
Vw Volume of water (m3)
extended the “pool” of combined renewable energy systems and
have examined the performance of hybrid systems that usually
consist from combinations of solar, wind, hydro and biomass. Pet-
rakopoulou et al. [10] presented a hybrid solar/wind/hydro plant
that also used the surplus energy to produced hydrogen via elec-
trolysis. The simulation estimated that the efficiency of this sug-
gested hybrid plant would be 14.4% on annual basis. Similarly,
Schmidt et al. [11] presented a similar combination, i.e. solar/wind/
hydro with pumped storage in order to stabilize the grid and to
mitigate some of the greenhouse gas emissions for the country of
Brazil. A final but significant distinction that should be made about
pump storage technologies is the classification into “open-loop”
and “closed-loop” pump storage technologies. According to the
Energy Storage Association, this classification can be done in
accordance to the connection of the corresponding pump storage
technology “to a naturally-flowing water feature” for the case of
“open-loop” or not for the case of “closed-loop” [12]. Effectively, the
vast majority of the existing pump storage facilities are open loop
and could be more appropriately described as “pump-back hydro-
electric dams”. Nonetheless, the concept of “closed-loop” pump
storage is very intriguing, and several such projects have been
recently developed or are under development [13].
A very interesting location for assessing the grid integration of
renewable energy is the State of Montana because it combines
existing hydropower dams along with rapidly growing various
renewable energy (VRE) technologies. The State of Montana is
ranked fifth in the metric “Renewable Energy Consumption as a
Share of State Total” with an overall share of 33.4% [14]. This is an
impressive performance given the fact that the state has the largest
reserves of coal in the United States and these quantities account
for the one-third of the county’s total recoverable reserves [15]. A
relative advantage for the development of hydropower in the state
has been the geography and the elevation differences. This present
study focuses primarily on the Canyon Ferry Dam and the sur-
rounding system of smaller dams that are connected with it. The
Canyon Ferry Dam started operating gradually between 1953 and
1954 and the overall power output of the three turbines is 50 MW.
This dam is of particular interest due to the multi-purpose nature of
its operation, since except the electricity production the dam is
used for flood control and irrigation purposes. Moreover, since 1955
the focus has also been on wildlife conservation, an aspect that
shows the overall significance of the project to the whole area. As
mentioned before, the Canyon Ferry Dam is not a stand-alone hy-
dropower plant but a significant branch of the system of reservoirs
of upper Missouri Basin [16]. A point of interest for this study is the
Helena Valley Unit/Reservoir which is located 3.5 miles down-
stream of the Canyon Ferry Dam. The Helena Valley Unit is a
reservoir of significant volume that also has a multi-purpose
operation [17]. A very interesting and thorough study has pro-
posed converting the Helena Valley Unit into a small hydropower
plant of approximately 9.4 MW [18].
Pumped storage has primarily a negative net electricity pro-
duction balance as shown by the data that are presented by the U.S.
Energy Information Administration [19] and the primer purpose of
the technology has shifted during the last two decades. The reason
is that several newer renewable energy systems have entered the
overall energy mix and pumped storage can be used as a buffer that
can “smoothen up” the production fluctuations of wind and solar,
which have been shown to be significant for the State of Montana
[14]. At the same time, as shown in Fig. 1, the fraction of various
renewable energy (VRE) has grown significantly in Montana,
especially after the year 2005 for the case of wind power and the
year 2010 for the case of solar power. Also, wind power and hy-
dropower are shown in Fig. 1 to have different “fluctuation fre-
quencies” and their aggregated energy generation has less variance
than the individual case of hydropower.
The information that are shown above, present a unique chal-
lenge that needs to be addressed and this is the integration of
various renewable energy (VRE) in the grid and at the same time
the valorization of the energy potential of the Helena Valley
reservoir. This present study introduces a novel configuration that
could integrate the two problems and provide an affordable solu-
tion for storing the excess energy from the various renewable en-
ergy (VRE) and at the same time enhance the Canyon Ferry Dam
with the added feature of pumped storage. The proposal is to
recirculate water from the Helena Valley reservoir to the Canyon
Ferry Dam, by utilizing the excess energy from the available various
renewable energy (VRE) installations of the area. This proposal is a
unique merging between the “open-loop” and “closed-loop”
pumped storage technologies. In the framework of this idea, this
present study aims to assess the additional generated energy/po-
wer potential along with the benefits and the challenges of this
endeavor. A crucial intermediate step is the assessment of the water
availability that could be recirculated from the Helena Valley
reservoir to the Canyon Ferry Dam for pumped storage.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Proposal of the “Hydrobattery” scheme
The water reserves of the Canyon Ferry Dam are not constant
and there are months that the water discharge to the turbine is
suboptimal and this influences the production of electricity. At the
same time, there are periods that the water elevation of the Helena
Valley reservoir is high and no water (or very low amounts) is
diverted from the Missouri river into the reservoir. Given the data
presented above and the characteristics of the Helena Valley
reservoir and the Canyon Ferry Dam, this study proposes a unique
configuration that is hybrid between the “open-loop” and the
“closed-loop” pumped storage systems. The idea is presented in
Fig. 2 and considers the Helena Valley reservoir and the Canyon
Ferry Dam as closed system where water can be recirculated up-
stream from the Helena Valley reservoir back to the Canyon Ferry
Dam. The basic concept of the proposed idea is that the water from
the Canyon Ferry Dam that is discharged to the turbines is then
directed to the Missouri river. From the total flow of the river a
 S. Vakalis et al. / Renewable Energy 155 (2020) 547e554 549

Fig. 1. Electricity production from hydro, wind and solar for the State of Montana (Figure utilized data from EIA [14]).

Fig. 2. The proposed scheme of the “Hydrobattery".

fraction is then diverted to the Helena Valley reservoir. This would
create a system that -when the water reserves are sufficient - it
could work as a circuit that would “recharge” the Canyon Ferry Dam
and increase the electricity production. Therefore, this proposed
idea is referred to as “Hydrobattery”.
2.2. Utilized data, scenario analysis and energy calculations
This study will examine and analyze the historic reserves of the
two reservoirs, in order to assess the potential success of such a
proposal. Detailed data have been retrieved from the “HYDROMET
Data System” [20] which is an automated data network that is
operated by the Bureau of Reclamation [21]. A series of monitoring
stations have been installed in several areas of the Great Plains
Region with the scope to gather continuously hydrological and
meteorological data in real time. Numerous monitoring results
have been retrieved and have been provided in the form of
supplementary tables. Supplementary Table 1 (S.T. 1) provides a list
of the most commonly used parameters that can be retrieved from
the HydroMet database. Supplementary Table 2 (S.T. 2) presents the
elevation of the water in the Canyon Ferry Dam on a monthly basis
between the years 2010 and 2018. For the same period of time and
(again) on a monthly basis, Supplementary Table 3 (S.T. 3) shows
the average discharge of water from the Canyon Ferry Dam to the
turbines for electricity production and Supplementary Table 4 (S.T.
4) presents the water content in Helena Valley Dam (cubic meters)
along with the simulated reduced water content in Helena Valley
Dam for the proposed scenario that is presented in the Results
section.
The last five years with available data, i.e. 2014 -2018, have been
utilized for applying the proposed optimization “Hydrobattery” and
for the assessment of the enhanced power production by imple-
menting the idea. Nonetheless, the supplementary tables present
data for all the years since 2010. Also, historic data from the last 20
550 S. Vakalis et al. / Renewable Energy 155 (2020) 547e554
years have been studied in order to assess the possible change in
available reserves due to alternations of the climate in the region.
The potential energy has been calculated for the water reserves of
the Canyon Ferry Dam as shown in Eq. (1). The calculation for the
power of the discharged water is shown in Eq. (2). The efficiency of
the turbines has been calculated by dividing the generated energy
with the total energy of the water that was discharged to the tur-
bines as shown in Eq. (3). The maximum allowable volume of water
that can be inserted in the Canyon Dam has been assigned in
accordance to the maximum output discharge flow to the turbines
in recent years and this value was recorded in April of 2014. The
calculation for the maximum water discharge to the turbines that
can be added is shown in Eq. (4). Overall, April is consistently a
month with high amounts of water reserves and high levels of
recorded water elevation for both the Helena Valley reservoir and
the Canyon Ferry Dam. Therefore, the net difference of the water
reserves of April through the timespan of the last 20 years has been
used in order to assess any possible tendencies due to climate
change. Finally, for the scenario of “Hydrobattery” application, the
(previously calculated) amounts of water are added to the Canyon
Ferry Dam and the energy production parameters are calculated,
i.e. the potential energy, the energy generation and the power
generation, for efficiencies between 85 and 94% which are very
representative of the historically recorded turbine efficiencies at
the Canyon Ferry Dam. These calculations are shown in the Eq. (5)
-7. Statistical analysis has been performed for the investigation of
the potential correlation (Pearson’s equation) of the efficiency of
the hydroturbines and the discharged volume of water and is
presented in Eq. (8).
Ep ¼ m  g  h
Pw ¼ Ep/ t
h ¼ Pel/ Pw
M.A.D. ¼ Vw [April - 2014] - Vw [monthi-yeari]
Ep - added ¼ (mmax  g  hmax) - Ep
Pw e added ¼ Ep - added /t
Pextra ¼ Pw e added h [85% / 94%]
P span.
ðx  mxÞðy  myÞ
r ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
P Fig. 8 presents the calculated additional power generated that
ðx  mxÞ2 ðy  myÞ2
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Analysis and results
By using equations (1) and (2), the potential energy and the
power of the water have been calculated for the available water
reserves in the Canyon Ferry Dam and are presented in Fig. 3 and
Fig. 4 respectively. The overall tendency shows that the late winter/
early spring months can be identified as the ones with higher
available amounts of water. At the same time, there is a rate of
decline for the available water during the summer months with the
minimum values being between July and September. The frequency
of rain (rainfall), the temperature (surface evaporation) and the
melting of ice are crucial factors that influence the availability of
water. This time distribution is also supported by results that have
been published by studies in other areas as well. For example, Hunt
et al. [22], presented similar energy availability distributions for the
case of Brazil for all the areas except the southern part of the
country.
Fig. 5 presents the monthly efficiency of the turbines by taking
into account the reported generated energy for the “HYDROMET
Data System” and the calculated power of the water as shown in
Fig. 4, and in accordance to Eq. (3). As shown in Fig. 5 the efficiency
of the turbines fluctuates between 79 and 94%. These efficiencies
are well within the range of values that have been reported by other
similar studies [23]. Correlation analysis has performed in order to
assess the possible connection between the potential energy of the
water and the overall efficiency and the analysis returned a weak
negative correlation with a value of 25.8%. Similarly a weak
negative correlation of 22.18% was calculated for the relation
between the amount of discharged water and the efficiency of the
hydroturbines.
As mentioned in the methodology section, the maximum
allowable volume of water that can be inserted in the Canyon Dam
has been assigned in accordance to the maximum output discharge
flow to the turbines that has been recorded in recent years and this
value was recorded in April of 2014. The calculation for the
maximum available water that can be added is shown in Eq. 4. and
is presented here in Fig. 6. It should be stated that this amount of
water is pumped from the Helena Valley reservoir back to the
Canyon Ferry Dam.
By interpreting the results of Fig. 6, it would be extrapolated that
during the late summer and autumn months there very high
amounts of water that need to be pumped back to the Canyon Ferry
Dam in order to reach the maximum allowable limit (in the
(1) framework of this study). A notable point that is presented in the
graph is that for the short time span of these five years (2014e2018)
(2) there are several years that the demand would fluctuate signifi-
cantly, e.g. 2014, 2017, 2018. Supplementary Table 5 (S.T. 5) presents
(3) the net difference of the output flow of the Canyon Ferry Dam to the
hydroturbines (in thousand cubic meters) for the last twenty
(4) available years, i.e. the years 1999e2018 and the highest fluctua-
tions have been calculated to be during the last decade. The data
(5) fluctuation is primarily related to lower water demand during the
early spring months due to the higher available amounts of water.
(6) Nonetheless, if the scope is to analyze any possible changes of the
water reserves - due to climate change or any other reasons - a
(7) more thorough analysis should be performed and for a longer time
Fig. 7 presents the calculated additional energy generated and
(8)
would be the outcome of the implementation of the “Hydro-
battery”. As shown in Fig. 7, there are specific months where the
average additional generated energy would be more than 3 GJ, e.g.
May 2015, and JaneOct e Nov of 2014. On the lower end, there are
the cases of March 2018 and May 2014 where the average addi-
tional generated energy would be less than 0.5 GJ. The addition of
water in the Canyon Ferry Dam would not only increase the total
water mass (and the flow) that would be discharged to the turbines,
but also would raise the elevation of the surface and increase the
hydraulic head. Therefore, this aggregated effect produces very
interesting results.
Fig. 8 shows that the application of the concept of the “Hydro-
battery” would provide 2.39e3.39 MW of additional power with a
5% fluctuation potential due to the efficiency of the turbines. This is
a significant addition since, although the nominal output is 50 MW,
there are few months during the last 20 years that the power
production exceeded 40 MW [20]. It should be stated that a very
thorough study has been implemented, which proposed the con-
version of the existing Helena Valley Pumping Plant site into a
 S. Vakalis et al. / Renewable Energy 155 (2020) 547e554 551

Fig. 3. Potential energy of the water reserves in the Canyon Ferry Dam.

Fig. 4. Calculated power of the water reserves in the Canyon Ferry Dam.

hydroelectric plant that would produce nominal power of around
9.4 MW, and this is a very interesting idea [18]. The first advantage
of implementing the “Hydrobattery” concept would be the reduced
needs for additional infrastructure, although the exact economics
of each plan has not been assessed yet. The “Hydrobattery” concept
could be an economically viable pathway for stabilizing the power
output of the Canyon Ferry Dam at a constant higher level in
comparison to the present production. Specifically, for the case of
the State of Montana electricity has an end-use cost of 5.19 cents/
kWh for industrial usage and can be as high as 10.96 cents/kWh for
residential usage. This would amount to total additional end-use
electricity sells of up to 76720 $/day, i.e. more than 28 million
$/year.
3.2. Challenges and future prospects of the “Hydrobattery” concept
Another issue that rises from the implementation of the
“Hydrobattery” concept is the use of the excess energy from sur-
rounding various renewable energy sources (VRE) which have been
continuously growing in the region and in the United States. The
production peaks of VREs is not always covered by the demand and
vice versa, i.e. the peak demand is not always covered by the supply
of VREs at this given moment. Therefore, the integration of VREs
has also been a trigger for increased attention to the pumped
storage technologies [24]. On a second level, the distribution of
produced PV solar power can be constraint by the lack of sufficient
output change infrastructure [25]. At the same time, the merge and
combined operation of hydropower with solar [26] and wind [27]
has been reported in the literature and several challenges are being
tackled by means of advanced tools like stochastic modelling.
Nonetheless, it should be states that the modelling of the avail-
ability from VREs goes beyond the scope of this study and will be
the focus of immediate future work.
An additional parameter is the daylight-bounded production of
electricity from solar PV installations which may be a hint for a
second (alternative) strategy than the one proposed in the frame-
work of this manuscript. The proposed scheme of “Hydrobattery” is
projected to have continuous operation but a closed-loop system or
552 S. Vakalis et al. / Renewable Energy 155 (2020) 547e554

Fig. 5. Efficiencies of the hydroturbines in the Canyon Ferry Dam.

Fig. 6. Maximum amount of water that can be pumped from Helena Valley Reservoir back to the Canyon Ferry Dam by applying the “Hydrobattery” concept.

Fig. 7. Additional potential energy at the Canyon Ferry Dam after the application of the “Hydrobattery” concept.
 S. Vakalis et al. / Renewable Energy 155 (2020) 547e554
Fig. 8. Simulated additional power generated at the Canyon Ferry Dam after the
application of the “Hydrobattery” concept.
a semi-continuous pumping system could be able to take advantage
of the solar peaks and potentially be more appealing in respect to
the maximum excess renewable energy that would be stored via
pumped hydro storage and in respect to the moderate transport of
water resources from the one reservoir to another. Thus, the
“Hydrobattery” concept is not only an energy storage scheme but
also can be developed to be a water management system. Further
assessment of the potential environmental risks should be imple-
mented before the idea of “Hydrobattery” gets materialized. As
primer examples of possible risks could be the influence of reduced
or increased water quantities to the aquatic ecosystem in the res-
ervoirs and the effect of advanced recirculation applications to the
spillway flow from the upstream dams, e.g. from the Canyon Ferry
Dam to the Missouri river.
4. Conclusions
A new concept was introduced in the framework of this study
that is defined as the “Hydrobattery” scheme. It is based on
combining water resource management and pumped storage and
has attributes both from “open-loop” and “closed-loop” pumped
storage technologies. In addition, variable renewable energy sour-
ces (VRE) are growing rapidly worldwide and their optimal inte-
gration into the electrical grids is still a challenge. By means of
pumped storage the production peaks from wind and solar can be
“smoothened e up”. A case study for a set of two water reservoirs
from the Missouri Basin was presented, i.e. the Canyon Ferry Dam
and the Helena Valley reservoir. The application of the “Hydro-
battery” seems to become increasingly helpful due to the increased
fluctuation of the water reserves of the Canyon Ferry Dam during
the last decade -in comparison to previous years. The aggregated
effect of increased water flow discharge to the turbines of the
Canyon Ferry Dam along with the increased elevation of the water
reserves is projected to provides a significant boost to the overall
energy production of the unit of additional 2.39e3.39 MW which is
at a level of around 5%. Also, the application of the “Hydrobattery”
concept would assist the unit to operate for longer periods closer to
the nominal power output of 50 MW, something that is a big
challenge for hydropower plants due to seasonal fluctuations and
increased climate concerns.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
553
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Stergios Vakalis: Conceptualization, Supervision, Methodology,
Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Validation, Writing - re-
view & editing. Konstantinos Kaffas: Conceptualization, Method-
ology, Validation, Data curation. Konstantinos Moustakas:
Investigation, Writing - review & editing, Data curation.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.179.
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