{"id":14784,"date":"2015-11-25T08:37:49","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T13:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14784"},"modified":"2015-11-25T08:37:49","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T13:37:49","slug":"for-storing-electricity-utilities-are-turning-to-pumped-hydro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14784","title":{"rendered":"For Storing Electricity, Utilities Are Turning to Pumped Hydro"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Storing Electricity, Utilities\u00a0Are Turning to Pumped Hydro<\/a><\/h3>\n

High-tech batteries may be garnering the headlines. But utilities from Spain to China are increasingly relying on pumped storage hydroelectricity \u2013 first used in the 1890s \u2013 to overcome the intermittent nature of wind and solar power.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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In the past decade, wind energy production has soared in Spain, rising from 6 percent of the country\u2019s electricity generation in 2004 to about\u00a020 percent today<\/a>. While that is certainly good news for boosters of clean energy, the surge in renewables has come with the challenge of ensuring that electric power is available\u00a0when customers want it, not just when the wind blows.<\/p>\n

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Iberdrola–Spain\u2019s Cortes-La Muela project, which uses pumped hydro storage to produce electricity.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To help accommodate the increased supply of wind, Spain’s utilities have turned not to high-tech, 21st-century batteries, but rather to a time-tested 19th-century technology \u2014 pumped storage hydroelectricity. Pumped storage facilities are typically equipped with pumps and generators that move water between upper and lower reservoirs. A basic setup uses excess electricity \u2014 generated, say, from wind turbines during a blustery night \u2014 to pump water from a lower reservoir, such as behind a dam, to a reservoir at a higher elevation. Then, when the wind ceases to blow or electricity demand spikes, the water from on high is released to spin hydroelectric turbines.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s precisely what the giant Spanish utility Iberdrola has done with the expansion to its $1.3 billion\u00a0Cortes-La Muela hydroelectric<\/a>\u00a0scheme, completed in 2013. The company uses surplus electricity to pump water from the J\u00facar River to a large reservoir on a bluff 1,700 feet above the river. When demand rises, the water is released to generate electricity. The 1,762-megawatt pumped storage generating capacity is Europe’s largest and is part of a hydroelectric complex capable of powering about 500,000 homes a year.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Storing Electricity, Utilities\u00a0Are Turning to Pumped Hydro High-tech batteries may be garnering the headlines. But utilities from Spain to China are increasingly relying on pumped storage hydroelectricity \u2013 first used in the 1890s \u2013 to overcome the intermittent nature of wind and solar power.\u00a0 In the past decade, wind energy production has soared in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10765,1103,269,10660,7163],"class_list":["post-14784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-batteries","tag-electricity","tag-energy-storage","tag-power-utilities","tag-yale-environment-360"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14785,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14784\/revisions\/14785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}