BIKE: Wind & Pumped Storage

[alan_drake]

Alan:
 
> I know what you are talking about..., my grandfather worked for Con-Ed, New York, until he retired in the 60s. For a time, he worked on pumped storage concepts, though unsure if they were ever built. As a teenager in the mid 70s, Minnesota's Northern States Power (NSP) considered a pumped storage facility above the bluffs of the Mississippi at Lake Pepin, which also never happened.

Niagara Falls are turned off at night and used to make hydroelectricity and then turned back (~70% from memory) on for tourists to see during the day. This helps preserve the falls from becoming just rapids.

It also creates at LOT of 3 AM electricity.

They have pumped storage there to switch from off-peak to peak power.

> I can imagine that there are huge environmental and displacement concerns,

Actually not.  Some fish mortality but that can be limited with screens.
Site dependent, of course.

> but you are probably correct that pumped storage is an essential part of rolling out wind power generation. Has any-one considered managing existing hydro/ flood reservoirs like the highland lakes for this purpose?
 
I did a grad school study of two LCRA lakes that had a small mothballed pump between them. (8 MW from vague memory).  It could have worked technically, but the economics were unfavorable in the late 1970s.

Hydro releases can be timed for wind shortfalls (and throttled back when it is windy) in areas with more hydroresources.  Smart management at LCRA might be able to do some limited wind/hydro pairing for several months each year; but not year-round.  Texas just has too little hydro for this strategy.  OTOH Bonneville is looking at some large wind investments to stretch their MASSIVE hydropower.  A great match !

One possibility is in the desert mountains of West Texas.  Find a good spot and use the same water over & over.  Perhaps use ping-pong balls to slow evaporation. 

No one has ever done pumped air commercially with a depleted NG field, but Austin/LCRA could try for a DOE grant :-) and get a free one.

Texas might be able to double their current wind before this becomes much of an issue, but I see grid stability as a future issue as wind % increases.  Better to face it now than later IMHO.

Alan