wind and pumped hydro storage

[occam1]

I may get involved in a project that has both wind turbines and pumped hydro storage.

I would appreciate pointers to other such projects I could look at, or papers that would be relevant to such projects.

 

[alehman]

Try Google or ieee.org

 

[TurbineGen]

What stage of the project are you getting into? Are you referring to the construction end or the operational end? If you are into the construction end, look up "Kinzua Dam" and search for a fellow named "Chief cornplanter". You will find papers on the Seneca Pumped-Storage project in Warren, PA. There are some news articles and books written on this that are very informative.



------------------------------------------------------------------------
If it is broken, fix it. If it isn't broken, I'll soon fix that.

 

[occam1]

Thanks for the replies.

I haven't found much in the IEEE publications (I am a member with an IEEExplore account) that describe projects that have both pumped hydro and wind power. I am surprised at how little Google turns up. I am looking for example projects that I can study. The project I am getting involved with is in the planning stage.

The Kinzua Dam project doesn't seem to have the focus I am interested in. I guess you are pointing me (and anyone else who reads this thread) at the abrogation of the commitment to Seneca.

 

[davidbeach]

You'll probably have much more luck looking at wind and pumped storage separately. There's no reason that they would need to be part of the same project.

 

[occam1]

Actually, there are good reasons why sometimes wind and hydro would be part of the same project, but I don't want to go into that here.

 

[davidbeach]

What I meant was that you can learn about each separately, you don't need to limit yourself to projects that combined both. Even when combined, you have wind generation and you have pumped storage and very little interaction between the two except for power flow.

 

[occam1]

I agree that there is plenty of material on each subject. The reason for my post is that it would be helpful to me to find one or more projects in which both wind turbines and pumped hydro-electric power were used.

Pointers to such projects would be much appreciated.

 

[CJCPE]

You could take the list of pumped storage plants at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage

and search for information on individual plants.

 

[tlrols]

There are really no pumped storage projects that were initially designed to pump wind generated electricity. Most of the present, in-service pumped storage projects in the USA were built to pump off-peak nuclear generation. Two wonderful examples of this are the Raccoon Mountain project (TVA) and Bath County (Virginia Power/Allegehney Power).

Both of these large pumped storage projects tend to pump off-peak nuclear generation. The idea is that nuclear plants are fueled based on various nuclear requirements (i.e. poisoning, etc) and not neccesarily fuel depletion. Nuclear plant operators desire to run their nuclear plants at full load with little or no variation. When off-peak, this generation is "in-excess" of need and is used to "pump" the energy into a reservoir which stores energy available for peak, or day time use. The total efficiency of this process is about 60%, i.e. about 80% to pump, and 80% to generate. Presumably one would factor in the efficiency of the initial MW generated...for wind who cares since the fuel is free.

The only stumbling blocks with doing this on a large scale for wind is the cost, and possibly the enviromental issues associated with the reservoir(s) and water source for the storage. This IS a good idea but it is subject to economies of scale and would certainly cost many millions of dollars to implement (probably billions).

Search terms would be: Bath County pumped storage, Helms pumped storage, and Raccoon Mountain pumped storage.

 

[waross]

I am following this thread with great interest. I sometimes consult for a small utility. (Very small) that may be ideally suited to a wind/pumped storage system. Same recurring problem, no capital.
They presently use diesel power. Their load peaks at about 1.2 MW.
They utility/community is situated on an island, and has some geographical features that may lend themselves to water storage.
One issue with pumped sea water is the possible contamination of well water with brackish water. The best reservoir areas will probably be rejected for this reason, but there are a few areas left where salt water storage may be possible.


Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[occam1]

One example is described in the document pointed to in the attached link (payment required to obtain the document). This is a proposal for wind turbines and hydro for Greek islands.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/03062619/2001/00000070/00000004/art00036

I am still looking for other examples.