Scientific Advisory Board of the VGB: Pumped-storage hydro power plants are essential to enable integration of renewables into the European electricity system
- Renewables such as wind and solar require appropriate back-up and balancing power
- Pumped-storage hydro power plants are efficient and highly flexible assets for providing balancing power as well as electricity storage for several hours
To ensure the current level of security of supply in markets with increasing amounts of fluctuating power from wind and solar, the need for additional back-up reserve, balancing power and storage capacities are increasing within the next decades. In particular, Conventional Power Plants and Pumped-Storage Hydro Power Plants (PSP) are enabling pillars for a well-functioning European electricity system. The additional advantage of PSP lies in the dual regulation, since the positive capacity (turbine operation) as well as the negative capacity (pump operation) can be provided within a few minutes.
The internationally lined-up Scientific Advisory Board of VGB PowerTech therefore examined the extraordinary technical and ecological potential of PSP. They noticed that PSPs are a reliable, efficient and highly flexible technology for storing large amounts of electricity for several hours on the one hand and for a longer time in the Alps and Scandinavia on the other hand. PSPs are the only available mature large-scale electricity storage technology. Advanced PSPs provide efficiencies above 80 % - this makes PSPs a cost-efficient way of balancing fluctuating power from wind and solar plants.
With a capacity of more than 50.9 GW (EU-27 countries, Norway, Switzerland) and a generation capacity of 35 TWh PSPs belong to the vast majority of today´s available electricity storage in Europe and constitute an affordable response to demand/supply fluctuations of the electricity system as they are constantly available within a few minutes and highly flexible.
An European Commission-funded study* recently identified 2.3 TWh of development-ready storage capacity of new PSPs in EU-15, Norway and Switzerland. However, whilst the growth of Renewables is demanding a further expansion of storage capacities and higher flexibility, the existing electricity market designs are totally discouraging PSP investments.
In several EU states distortive and double grid fees and excessive taxation endanger the profitability of existing PSPs and hamper further expansion of PSPs in major European countries with hydro power potential. In addition, increasing production from photovoltaics is shaving away price peaks and is reducing peak/off-peak spreads. As a result of this, there is no business case for investments in new PSPs today.
Nevertheless without hydro power and especially PSPs, it would be impossible to meet the EU´s ambitious renewable targets, which imply 35% of electricity from renewables by 2020 (2014: 28.6%).