{"id":763,"date":"2010-06-07T15:44:53","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T10:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greenworldinvestor.com\/?p=763"},"modified":"2010-06-07T15:44:53","modified_gmt":"2010-06-07T10:14:53","slug":"is-the-green-investing-opportunity-in-pumped-hydro-storage-being-overlooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/2010\/06\/07\/is-the-green-investing-opportunity-in-pumped-hydro-storage-being-overlooked\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Green Investing Opportunity in Pumped Hydro Storage being overlooked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pumped Hydro Storage Introduction <\/strong><\/p>\n

Pumped Hydro Storage <\/a>along with Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) are the less glamorous cousins of Energy Storage Approaches like Lithium Batteries,Flywheels and Capacitors .The Green Investing Limelight has been firmly taken over by startups like A123 Systems which have failed to perform to their initial hype.Pumped Hydro Storage on the other hand is already extensively used by Power Companies to store low cost electricity during off peak hours and then used during peak times to supply the high demand.There is 90 GW of Global Pumped Hydro Storage already existing in the world and with increasing Solar and Wind Energy\u00a0 this Capacity is only going to grow.The main use of Pumped Hydro Storage is for Grid Energy Storage rather than Energy Storage for Automobiles and Electronic Products.The Electric Utilities are the main customers of this Technology using Pumped Hydro Storage for<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Load Balancing<\/strong> – Storing Power during Low Usage Periods and Generating Power at High Usage Periods<\/li>\n
  2. Accommodation of Intermittent Sources of\u00a0 Energy<\/strong> – Solar Energy and Wind Energy are\u00a0 growing at a scorchingly fast rate of 50% and 30% CAGR over the last several years.Larger share of these forms of renewable energyin the Electricity Mix is driving the growth Grid Storage.<\/li>\n
  3. Reducing Capital Investments <\/strong>as Peak Power plants like Natural Gas Combined Cycle Plants are much more expensive to run than normal Thermal and Nuclear Energy Plants<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Advantages and Disadvantages of Pumped Hydro Storage<\/strong><\/p>\n

    This form of Energy Storage also leads to losses of between 15 – 30% due to inefficiency.There are also minor problems of environmental impact of large hydro plants and availability of\u00a0 favorable sites. However Hydro power storage is quite inexpensive with\u00a0 with estimates ranging from $500-$1500\/kW power and $50-$150\/kWh energy storage capacity; which is about 1\/10th the cost of energy storage like Lithium Batteries.The main advantages are that it uses existing infrastructure of Hydro Power which has a large global installed base.In the 1930s technology was developed for building Turbines which could generate Electricity and also serve as Motors allowing Storage of Hydro Power.Also Pumped Hydro Storage has High Reliability of >99% and\u00a0 relatively Long Cycle times which means that the stored electricity can be used in a few hours to a few days.<\/p>\n

    Why Invest in Pumped Hydro Storage
    \n<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The trend towards Pumped Hydro Storage\u00a0 is increasing with countries like China,Scotland,USA and Australia proposing massive new capacities.While USA has 21 GW and Europe 38 MW ,China has around 14.55 GW of Pumped Hydro Storage Capacity.China intends to increase this to 41 GW by 2020, which at $300,000\/MW would mean an investment of ~7.5\u00a0 BillionDollar by China alone over the next 10 years.<\/p>\n

    How to Invest in Pumped Hydro Storage<\/strong><\/p>\n

    There are not a lot of glamorous startups in this form of Energy Storage unlike other segment of Green Industry like A123 Systems,Solyndra and Tesla.Most of the companies that can used to invest in this space are large global industrial companies like Toshiba<\/a> and Emerson Control Systems<\/a>.While a pure play is difficult to find,Investing in these Conglomerates is also a Less Risky Green Investment.<\/a><\/p>\n

    China State Grid to up pumped storage hydropower capacity – Reuters<\/a><\/h3>\n

    The State Grid Corp of China, China’s dominant grid operator, plans to raise its pumped storage hydropower generating capacity to 21 gigawatts (GW) by 2015 and 41 GW by 2020, complementing the fast development of irregular renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.On Sunday, the State Grid started building a 1.2 GW pumped storage hydropower plant in southern Jiangxi province, the first phase of a planned 2.4 GW capacity expansion that will have a total cost of about 5 billion yuan ($732.3 million).China had only 14.55 GW of pumped storage hydropower capacity at the end of 2009, according to the State Grid.China’s total power generating capacity was 874 GW at the end of 2009<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Pumped Hydro Storage Introduction Pumped Hydro Storage along with Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) are the less glamorous cousins of Energy Storage Approaches like Lithium Batteries,Flywheels [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45,69],"tags":[1685,1712,1720,4095,4206,5601],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-renewable-energy-greeninvest","category-wind-renewable-energy-greeninvest","tag-electricity","tag-emerson","tag-energy","tag-power","tag-pumped-hydroelectric-storage","tag-toshiba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}