Deploying pump stations between adjacent cascade hydropower plants to form a cascade energy storage system (CESS) is a promising way to accommodate large-scale renewable energy sources, yet the mechanism how renewable curtailment is converted to hydroelectricity is still unclear.
How many Cascade hydropower stations are there in the hwsceb?
The ultimate planned capacity of wind and solar power plants in the HWSCEB are 2350 MW and 2900 MW, respectively. Three cascade hydropower stations with a total install capacity of 2478 MW have been built. Fig. 6 and Table 1 shows the basic overview of the cascade hydropower stations.
What is a large-scale Cascade hydropower energy storage system (LCHES)?
The retrofitted cascade hydropower system is called the large-scale cascade hydropower energy storage system (LCHES) in this paper. As shown in Fig. 3, the pumping station can utilize external excess electricity to pump water from downstream reservoir back to upstream reservoir, thereby recycling water potential energy. Fig. 3.
Can pumped storage power stations be built among Cascade reservoirs?
The construction of pumped storage power stations among cascade reservoirs is a feasible way to expand the flexible resources of the multi-energy complementary clean energy base. However, this way makes the hydraulic and electrical connections of the upper and lower reservoirs more complicated, which brings more uncertainty to the power generation.
What is a cascade hydropower plant & pump station?
The CESS is an integrated system of cascade hydropower plants and pump stations, whose main function is to consume excess energy from renewables, while satisfying water and energy demands for the public. Essentially, the CESS belongs to a kind of pumped storage power station.
Can cascade hydropower stations be transformed into a large-scale hydropower energy storage system?
This paper preliminarily evaluates the feasibility of transforming cascade hydropower stations to a large-scale cascade hydropower energy storage system (LCHES) via adding a pumping station between two adjacent upstream and downstream reservoirs.
How far can a Cascade Reservoir be from a pumping station?
According to the simulation results for the multi-year average representative year (2017), the maximum distance between the cascade reservoirs can be extended to over 20 km, as long as the overall efficiency of pumping station system is more than 55% (Fig. 14 (a)).