Underground Water Battery To Bust Open Power Storage Dam

The US Division of Power has been eyeballing pumped hydro vitality storage for a makeover, and it seems to be like they’ve a winner. The Texas agency Quidnet Power has simply received a $10 million grant to place the ending touches on a brand new sort of “water battery” that deploys underground rock formations as a substitute of getting to depend on elevated reservoirs.

Pumped Hydro Power Storage 101

For these of you new to the subject, pumped hydro is a centuries-old, gravity-based vitality storage expertise that has gained new relevance within the age of wind and solar energy.

The thought is to pump water to an higher reservoir each time extra wind or solar energy is on the market. When wanted, water from the reservoir flows downhill to an influence station, the place it runs generators to generate electrical energy.

Pumped hydro can run on a closed loop system, by which the identical water cycles between higher and decrease reservoirs. Pumped hydro programs can be designed as open loop, by which water from a river or different pure water physique is pumped to a reservoir, then discharged again after leaving the facility station.

Water Batteries Go Underground

These “water batteries” are nonetheless an vital a part of the vitality storage panorama within the US. Regardless of all of the hoopla over new lithium-ion expertise and different rising vitality storage programs, pumped hydro still accounts for about 93% of utility-scale vitality storage capability within the US.

The Power Division counts 43 present pumped hydro services within the US and is trying to double their collective capability. The issue is that typical water batteries contain an enormous quantity of above-ground infrastructure, and so they require topography that gives for the distinction in elevation. That makes it troublesome and costly to seek out websites for brand new services.

That’s the place Quidnet is available in. The corporate first got here throughout the CleanTechnica radar again in 2019, when the Power Division tapped the corporate to share in a spherical of funding to develop new pumped hydro programs.

“The innovative technology can function at increased temperature than conventional PSH, obtain 95% mechanical effectivity (every method), and has the potential to cut back capital expenditures and vitality storage options in comparatively flat areas the place typical PSH might not be doable,” the Power Division acknowledged.

Quidnet has not been asleep on the wheel since then. The brand new grant of $10 million comes by the Power Division’s innovative ARPA-E funding workplace, which focuses on supporting new high risk, high reward technologies.

“Quidnet Power, Inc. (Houston, TX) will scale its Geomechanical Pumped Storage (GPS) to a business system at CPS Power, the biggest U.S. municipal utility,” ARPA-E defined.

“GPS makes use of the earth as a mechanical battery by storing vitality as pressurized water between layers of rock. The target is to decrease value related to long-duration vitality storage by 50-75% to allow extra dependable and cost-effective utilization of renewable electrical energy producing property,” they add.

Lengthy Period Underground Power Storage Resolution To Kill Coal

That’s just about it in a nutshell. Though the idea is new sufficient to draw ARPA-E, the Quidnet mannequin leverages established mechanical programs and no matter terrain is at hand, so long as an applicable rock formation lies beneath the floor.

“Using existing drilling and hydropower machinery provide chains, Quidnet Power repurposes present sources to rapidly marshal implementable options to our most urgent vitality and local weather challenges,” Quidnet explains.

The corporate additionally factors out that its underground system is a closed-loop mannequin that minimizes water loss from evaporation.

If all goes based on plan, San Antonio’s CPS Power will function a excessive profile showcase for replication. The ARPA-E funding will allow Quidnet to scale up its pilot-stage system to a 1-megawatt, 10 megawatt-hour business system that may ship electrical energy for 10 hours or extra.

That 10-hour time-frame is a vital a part of the Power Division’s efforts to push utility scale vitality storage programs past the capabilities of lithium-ion battery expertise, which hits a wall after a number of hours.

With long duration vitality storage, utilities can combine extra wind and/or photo voltaic vitality into their grids, with out sacrificing reliability.

CPS, for one, is counting on more renewables. Inhabitants within the space is rising, and CPS estimates that it might want to add about 115 megawatts in producing capability yearly within the coming years. In the meantime, the utility goals to retire two of its oldest energy vegetation by 2030, the 830-megawatt Sommers fuel plant and the 1,345 megawatt Spruce coal plant. Three older fuel items on the Braunig plant are additionally slated for closure.

The Water Battery Revolution Is Simply Starting

Over and above the event of modern new programs, the nation’s present fleet of pumped storage services has room to increase. In 2018, for instance, Duke Power upgraded a 30-year-old pumped hydro system so as to add one other 300 megawatts in capability.

Floating solar panels onto reservoirs is one other approach to get extra clear energy from present pumped hydro infrastructure. In Germany, for instance, the corporate Vattenfall has launched into a program to put in photo voltaic panels on a number of of its pumped hydro services.

By way of websites for brand new pumped vitality storage services, brownfield improvement may come into play. In Kentucky, the hydropower agency Rye Power is eyeballing previous coal fields for new pumped hydro reservoirs.

The Swiss firm Nant de Drance illustrates one other strategy to the positioning choice dilemma. They leveraged underground caverns to assemble a massive 900-megawatt pumped hydro system. Use of the present caverns enabled the corporate to trim the expense of building for the underground powerhouse, although the undertaking nonetheless took 14 years to finish.

Over right here within the US, the Power Division can also be supporting the event of a new, compact underground powerhouse that may match right into a slim well-like construction.

The Power Division can also be relying on closed-loop programs of 1 form or one other to increase the nation’s pumped hydro capability. That fleet of 43 present pumped hydropower services consists primarily of open-loop programs. The Power Division’s Nationwide Renewable Power Laboratory just lately ran a GIS-enabled mapping examine of hundreds of thousands of potential websites for brand new closed-loop programs. After filtering for cost-optimization and different elements, the lab recognized thousands of potential sites for new pumped hydro vitality storage deployment within the US, together with 11,769 websites within the contiguous 48 states and three,077 websites in Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

In fact, most definitely only a small fraction of these websites are literally develop-able. Not serving to a lot is a coordinated effort by state-level workplace holders to stem the move of investor {dollars} in the direction of renewable energy projects. Nonetheless, the Nationwide Hydropower Affiliation is holding out hope. In a report issued final 12 months, the group is wanting so as to add 50 new gigawatts to the nation’s inventory of pumped hydro vitality storage capability by 2050.

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Picture: Geochemical pumped hydro vitality storage system courtesy of Quidnet Power.

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