Norway energy news- using lakes as batteries

"Norway’s mountains, lakes and rivers could eventually be turned into something like a giant battery — storing power generated by wind farms and solar panels elsewhere in Europe, then sending electricity back when renewable output slumps.


The idea is to use excess power generated by renewables to pump water upstream behind dams. When the electricity is needed, the water would be released, rushing past turbines as the energy is turned back into useful electricity.


Norway would be able to deliver a lot of power “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, in times where Europe needs huge volumes fast,” Norway’s energy minister Tord Lien said.


Norway is already one of the world’s top hydro power producers, able to cover almost all its own electricity needs with what’s generated from the country’s abundant lakes and glaciers. That, in turn, allows Norway to export almost all of its oil and gas.


Norway exports hydro power to the Netherlands and exchanges renewables with Sweden and Finland, and there are plans for similar green exchanges with Germany and the United Kingdom within the next five years.


But the marquee project is with Denmark, a country that relies heavily on wind energy. Norway imports Denmark’s excess wind-generated power and sends hydro-generated electricity back when the wind isn’t blowing, allowing Denmark to rely on renewables for about 40 percent of its electricity needs.


“You can clearly see that the Danish system, with so much wind and very little base load, would not be able to operate without hydro power,” said Auke Lont, the CEO of Statnett, the state-owned company that operates Norway’s grid.


Using Norway’s hydro dams to ensure a stable energy supply in countries that rely on renewables is “the cheapest and perhaps most environmentally-friendly solution,” said Kaspar Vereide, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.


A longtime advocate of the green battery idea, Vereide designed a way to upgrade the country’s dams so their reservoirs can fill and drain much faster. He calculates that it would cost about €6 billion to upgrade 20 of Norway’s hydroelectric plants to act as more efficient energy stores; that would give them a capacity of about 20 GW of power.


Norway has more than 900 hydro power plants that provide about 95 percent of the country’s domestic electricity needs — and officials say it could produce even more.


“We are holding back production,” said Christian Wilhelm Rynning-Tønnesen, CEO of Norway’s state-owned hydro company Statkraft. “We can increase our ability to produce a lot in a short period of time.”


The crucial element is getting Norwegian electricity out of Norway and to other parts of Europe, something that requires expensive undersea cables allowing electricity to be sent back and forth as needed.


Norway is scheduled to connect with Germany by 2020, once the €1.5-2 billion NordLink cable is operational, and by 2021 with the U.K. through the €2 billion NSN Link. And Norway could easily build more cables, according to Rynning-Tønnesen.


Šefčovič said the green battery idea would be an important element of the North Sea Offshore Grid Initiative, a project involving 10 countries which aims to develop an offshore electricity grid linking wind farms and other renewable energy sources.


Within Norway, however, there has been some resistance from consumer groups, which argue that building more infrastructure and trading more hydro power with other countries will raise electricity prices home as power is shunted to foreign markets.


Statkraft’s Rynning-Tønnesen dismissed such concerns, saying the impact for consumers would be marginal. Besides, he said, this is a win-win deal for Norway as it would import wind-powered electricity at “extremely low prices” when winds are strong, while exporting hydro power during times of no wind at a higher price.


And Lont, who is ultimately responsible for the working of the grid, cautioned prudence. “Before we embark on the next project, we think it’s wise to gain experience on how these interconnections interfere with the system,” he said."


From:
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http://www.politico.eu/article/norw...-europes-energy-gap-green-battery-renewables/
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The word is "accumulator" NOT battery!

We have had the Dinorwig power station (constructed in 1974) that exploits this idea. Good to see the Euro's catching up with Britain once again.

 

I still don't understand what they are doing?

 

Basically the idea is that we produce energy at times when we don't actually need to comsume it. So we use that surplus energy to pump water up to a high altitude level (kinetic energy converted into potential energy). Then when we need to consume energy we re-generate via hydro electric (in the case of water) by letting the water that was pumped up to a high level flow back down & turn water turbines that generate electricity.

So instead of storing the electical energy in giant batteries (which would be very expensive to produce) we store that energy in high level lakes as water at altitude.

An example is that wind turbines may turn fast at night & produce lots of energy whilst we are all in bed & don't actually need to consume that energey, so use it to pump the water up to a high level. Hence the high level lake/reservoir becomes a giant "accumulator" .... NOTE it is NOT a battery.

 

From Wikipedia:
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Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), or pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), is a type of hydroelectric energy storage used by electric power systems for load balancing. The method stores energy in the form of gravitational potential energy of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation.


Low-cost off-peak electric power is used to run the pumps. During periods of high electrical demand, the stored water is released through turbines to produce electric power. Although the losses of the pumping process makes the plant a net consumer of energy overall, the system increases revenue by selling more electricity during periods of peak demand, when electricity prices are highest.


Pumped storage is the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of March 2012, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) reports that PSH accounts for more than 99% of bulk production capacity worldwide, representing around 127 GW,[1] with storage capacity at 740 TWh.[citation needed]


Typically, the round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies in practice between 70% and 80%,[1][2][3][4] with some claiming up to 87%.[5] The main disadvantage of PHS is the specialist nature of the site required, needing both geographical height and water availability. Suitable sites are therefore likely to be in hilly or mountainous regions, and potentially in areas of outstanding natural beauty, and therefore there are also social and ecological issues to overcome.[6]


Pumped storage plants, like other hydroelectric plants, can respond to load changes within seconds.



The first use of pumped storage was in the 1890s in Italy and Switzerland. In the 1930s reversible hydroelectric turbines became available. These turbines could operate as both turbine-generators and in reverse as electric motor driven pumps.


The first use of pumped-storage in the United States was in 1930 by the Connecticut Electric and Power Company, using a large reservoir located near New Milford, Connecticut, pumping water from the Housatonic River to the storage reservoir 230 feet above.[8]


In 2009, world pumped storage generating capacity was 104 GW,[10] while other sources claim 127 GW, which comprises the vast majority of all types of utility grade electric storage.[11] The EU had 38.3 GW net capacity (36.8% of world capacity) out of a total of 140 GW of hydropower and representing 5% of total net electrical capacity in the EU. Japan had 25.5 GW net capacity (24.5% of world capacity).[10]



In 2010 the United States had 21.5 GW of pumped storage generating capacity (20.6% of world capacity).[12] PHS generated (net) -5.501 GWh of energy in 2010 in the US[13] because more energy is consumed in pumping than is generated.


The five largest operational pumped-storage plants are listed below (for a detailed list see List of pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations):

Station Country Location Capacity (MW) Refs

Bath County Pumped Storage Station United States 38°12′32″N 79°48′00″W 3,003 [14]
Guangdong Pumped Storage Power Station China 23°45′52″N 113°57′12″E 2,400 [15][16]
Huizhou Pumped Storage Power Station China 23°16′07″N 114°18′50″E 2,400 [17][18][19][20]
Okutataragi Pumped Storage Power Station Japan 35°14′13″N 134°49′55″E 1,932 [21]
Ludington Pumped Storage Power Plant United States 43°53′37″N 86°26′43″W 1,872 [22][23]

Note: this table shows the power-generating capacity in megawatts as is usual for power stations. However, the overall energy-storage capacity in megawatt-hours (MWh) is a different intrinsic property and can not be derived from the above given figures.


One can use pumped sea water to store the energy. The 30 MW Yanbaru project in Okinawa was the first demonstration of seawater pumped storage. A 300 MW seawater-based project has recently been proposed on Lanai, Hawaii, and several seawater-based projects have recently been proposed in Ireland and Chile.


A new concept is to use wind turbines or solar power to drive water pumps directly, in effect an 'Energy Storing Wind or Solar Dam'. This could provide a more efficient process and usefully smooth out the variability of energy captured from the wind or sun.[25][26].


[27] In northern Chile, the Espejo de Tarapacá project is a power project of Valhalla, that combines solar and hydroelectric resources. The project takes advantage of the unique geographic characteristics of the Atacama Desert in order to build a 300 MW pumped storage hydroelectric plant that uses the Pacific Ocean as its lower reservoir and an existing natural concavity as its upper reservoir, and a 600 MW-AC solar photovoltaic plant that is located in the region with the highest solar irradiation in the world. The above characteristics minimize the environmental impact and the cost of the plant, which is USD 400 MM for the pumped storage and USD 900 MM for the solar power plant.


The use of underground reservoirs has been investigated. Recent examples include the proposed Summit project in Norton, Ohio, the proposed Maysville project in Kentucky (underground limestone mine), and the Mount Hope project in New Jersey, which was to have used a former iron mine as the lower reservoir.


In Switzerland one study suggested that the total installed capacity of small pumped-storage hydropower plants in 2011 could be increased by 3 to 9 times by providing adequate policy instruments.[29]

 

This is the problem with Wiki. They are not factual. Just a bunch of snobs that think they know best!

Dinorwig power station was the first.

 

Portugal has this kind of thing.

 

Another alternative to lithium batteries is pumping water into an abandoned well:
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“In a field in Central Texas, Aaron Mandell and his crew are developing a way to turn abandoned oil and gas wells into electricity storage, instead of a battery.

The concept behind Mandell’s startup, Quidnet Energy, sounds simple: pumping water deep into the earth to fill up the cracks in-between rocks that previously held oil and gas. When the pressurized water is released, it flows through a turbine-generator above ground to produce electricity.

There is an emerging market to use batteries or other technologies to bank electricity when prices and demand are low, and discharge it when they are high.

The US market installed 221 megawatts of energy storage projects in 2015, up from the 65 megawatts added in 2014. One market research firm expects these projects to exceed 1 gigawatt in 2019.

Storing solar or wind energy for later use solves a big disadvantage for these two types of energy: they can’t produce electricity when it is dark or not windy.

Quidnet’s investors include the Will and Jada Smith Foundation and the Sorenson Impact Foundation.

Quidnet launched its first pilot project in Erath County, Texas, to demonstrate the concept. Mandell and his co-founder Howard Schmidt, an engineer with oil company Saudi Aramco, pumped 50,000 gallons of water into an abandoned natural gas well that is 2,800 feet deep. After pumping water into the well for 12 hours, they later generated six hours of electricity.

Choosing well-sealed underground reservoirs to prevent the pressurized water from leaking is one of Quidnet’s biggest concerns. Mandell said the pilot project recorded far lower water losses than anticipated: 1% of the water was lost per week.

Quidnet has a second pilot project planned at an old geothermal well in northern Nevada. The well is 14 inches in diameter, larger than a typical oil and gas well, making it possible to inject a higher volume of water – and later generating more power. The reservoir might provide 10 hours of electricity, after 14 hours of pumping water into the well.

The second pilot project will store electricity from a geothermal power plant in Nevada run by AltaRock Energy, where Mandell is also CEO.

Ultimately, Quidnet hopes to add water pumps and generators at groups of up to 20 abandoned wells, with each well between 1000-5000 feet deep and capable of storing 35 megawatt hours of energy.”

From:
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https://www.theguardian.com/sustain...lectricity-storage-underground-quidnet-energy
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Since the other thread about lithium batteries winning bidding for replacing a natural gas peaker at Long Beach, California was closed, I will at least somewhat answer the questions asked over there.

Lithium batteries won the bidding based on price, along with state and city requirements for reducing future carbon pollution in California air. They are known for bad smog in the Los Angeles valley, depending on the weather.

The problem with lithium batteries is that we will need a lot in the future if we have a lot of dams that need steady rain to provide power, solar panels that need a lot of cloudless days, and wind turbines that need windy days to work well. Batteries and their alternatives to store extra electricity for later use a lot of metals and chemicals, and the world's supply of easy to mine lithium is quite small.

People are starting to invest in and try pilot projects for lithium batteries and pumped water storage, either pumping water uphill so it can flow downhill later to produce electricity, or pumping water into a well so this pressurized water can later be released into a turbine to produce electricity.

Kentucky will likely be one of the last states to try anything new for energy, besides a few wealthy liberals, because we have several years worth of coal and natural gas, and our state government is partly owned by coal companies and has many conservative leaders- we have a TEA Party governor and a lot of conservative legislators such as Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. Kentucky still has several counties that do not allow alcohol sales, usually because of the Baptist religion still stuck in 1920s Prohibition and its problems with organized crime and people driving drunk to get back from a wet county, usually without using seat belts for their manly trucks or no motorcycle helmet on their conservative Harley.