Benefits Of Pumped Storage Plants

• Large-scale: This is the attribute that best positions pumped hydro storage which is especially suited for long discharge durations for daily or even weekly energy storage applications.
• Cost-effectiveness: thanks to its lifetime and scale, pumped hydro storage brings among the lowest cost of storage that currently exist.
• Reactivity: the growing share of intermittent sources reduces the inertia of the grid, which increases its instability. Reactivity, then, is key to avoid incidents, and hydropower production and storage can provide inertia and load balancing services to the grid. The current technologies provide response times that are counted in seconds or even milliseconds in the case of variable speed technology.
• Mature technology: for decades, pumped hydro storage has offered a cost-effective way to provide large-scale balancing and grid services, with predictable cost and performance. New hydro storage technologies, such as variable speed, now give plant owners even more flexibility, output, efficiency, reliability and availability.
• Renewable and Sustainable: Hydropower uses the force of water that can be pumped uphill and turbined downhill as much as needed. pumped hydro storage plants have a lifetime of more than 40 years for the electromechanical equipment and 100 years for the dam. Closed-loop pumped hydro storage present minimal environmental impact as they are not connected to existing river systems. In addition, they do not need to be located near an existing river and can therefore be located where needed to support the grid.
• Multi-functional: water management, irrigation control for agriculture, water distribution and water waste control.