Back in December 2013 Scottish and Southern Energy PLC (SSE) was granted planning approval for the 600 MW / 30 GWh pumped hydro storage (PHS) scheme at Coire Glas, northern Scotland. At the time I wrote a post called What makes current PHS tick?
Most pumped hydro storage schemes in countries like the UK, France and Switzerland operate in tandem with nuclear power where surplus (low price) electricity is used to pump and store water at night, every night, to supply power into the daily peak demand (high price) that in the UK occurs at 18:00±2 hours. The facilities get used every day and make money from the predictable price arbitrage that exists in wholesale electricity markets.
Low latitude solar may tick too
At low latitudes, solar PV may also be twinned with battery storage to cover the predictable diurnal cycle where surplus day time solar PV electricity may be used at night – every day and every night. And for so long as the goal is to not disconnect from the grid, this could make sense subject to prevailing electricity costs and the capital costs of installing a PV + battery system.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The potential energy contained in the waters of the Great Lakes amounts to approximately six thousand terawatt hours, enough to supply the US and Canada with electricity for an entire year were the lakes to be drained to sea level. This of course will never happen, but there may be potential for partial utilization of the resource. A pumped hydro system that uses Lakes Huron and Michigan as the upper reservoir and Lake Ontario as the lower could theoretically generate 10 terawatt-hours, or more, of seasonal energy storage without changing lake levels significantly. The most likely show-stopper is the increased likelihood of flooding in the lower St. Lawrence River during pumped hydro discharge cycles. (Inset: Niagara falls runs dry in 1969).
