The photo is sourced from renews.biz
This surge in interest to building pump-storage power plants is directly connected with the renewable energy boom in China. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), in 2022, China accounted for 46% of global capacity commissioning of wind and solar generators (123 GW out of total 266 GW); at the same time, the overall share of wind and solar energy in PRC energy mix at the end of the last year was 13.5%. Construction of such power plants allows for improving the efficiency of energy generation by wind and solar plants: excessive energy during the hours of low demand may be used for pumping the water from the lower to the upper tank, from where the water is released during the period of the growing load on the grid. At the same time, contrary to lithium-ion batteries, the efficiency of accumulation and reverse energy generation at the pump-storage plants does not depend on the number of charge and discharge cycles.
Hence, the pump-storage plants perform as the stabilisers of the energy system with high share of RES. Thanks to that, such plants are growing more and more popular not only in China, but all over the world. By May 2023, the pump-storage plants accounted for 15% of global capacity of hydropower plants (166 GW out of 1,131 GW), but for the plants currently under construction this share is already 52% (101 GW out of 194 GW), and for the projects currently at the pre-investment stage it is 55% (327 GW out of 591 GW). In addition to China, the major operators of the pump-storage plants currently under construction are such countries as Egypt (2.4 GW), Australia (2.3 GW), Vietnam (1.2 GW) and Austria (1.1 GW). New projects are being implemented in Morocco (935 MW), Russia (840 MW), Poland (750 MW), Israel (500 MW), Chile (300 MW) and Japan (200 MW).
Hydro power generation in general is one of the four sides of the low-carbon generation “quadrate”. In addition to wind, solar and hydro power generation it includes nuclear power plants (NPPs), which combine low level of emissions (across their entire life cycle) with high reliability of energy supply. According to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), in the USA the NPP workload in 2022 made 92.6%, exceeding the similar metric for solar panels (24.8%), wind generators (36.1%) and hydro power plants (37.4%).
