Assessment of high-head turbomachinery for underground pumped hydroelectric storage plants
Underground Pumped Hydroelectric Storage (UPHS) plant costs for plants equipped with advanced reversible pumped turbines have been considered. Equipment used includes single- and two-stage reversible pump turbines for operating heads from 500 to 1500 m. The effects of machinery costs, operating heads, plant configurations and sizes have been taken into account. The results indicate that the use of advanced machinery seems to push the minimum UPHS plant cost to heads greater than 1500 m. The employment of advanced, reversible pump turbines seems to be economically attractive. It is shown that pump-turbine efficiencies and the so-called charge/discharge ratio are very important design parameters for UPHS applications and the interactive effects of these parameters have been analyzed. The results show that under certain conditions a pump-turbine option with a higher charge/discharge ratio at the expense of somewhat lower operating efficiency can be desirable. Careful integration of pump-turbine performance characteristics with the overall system consideration (i.e., UPHS plant design and utility grid requirement) bears significantly on the direct cost savings due to the differing capital costs of the various machines. More importantly, such considerations have a significant impact on the storage cost, the most important element in UPHS plant cost considerations.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab., IL (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-31-109-ENG-38
- OSTI ID:
- 5777261
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-791204-11
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2. Miami international conference on alternative energy sources, Miami Beach, FL, USA, 10 Dec 1979
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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