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DOE OSTI · 1870821

Closed-Loop Pumped Storage Hydropower Resource Assessment for the United States. Final Report on HydroWIRES Project D1: Improving Hydropower and PSH Representations in Capacity Expansion Models

Rosenlieb, Evan·Heimiller, Donna·Cohen, Stuart
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Abstract

Pumped storage hydropower represents the bulk of the United States' current energy storage capacity: 23 gigawatts (GW) of the 24-GW national total (Denholm et al. 2021). This capacity was largely built between 1960 and 1990. PSH is a mature and proven method of energy storage with competitive round-trip efficiency and long life spans. These qualities make PSH a very attractive potential solution to energy storage needs, particularly for longer-duration storage (8 hours or more); such storage will be crucial to bridge gaps in electricity production as variable wind and solar production continue to comprise an ever-larger portion of the United States' energy portfolio (Cole et al. 2021; Frazier et al. 2021). However, it is unclear how much potential the United States has for the development of new PSH. No new large PSH has been constructed in the United States since the 1990s, and attempts to quantify technical potential capacity from PSH project applications to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) suffer from inconsistent site and cost evaluation methodologies and likely are not representative of all PSH opportunities. This study seeks to better under understand the technical potential for PSH development in the United States by developing a national-scale resource assessment for closed-loop PSH. Individual sites are not modeled in sufficient detail for project-level development, but they do provide valuable insights into potential resource areas across the United States, including the ability to provide estimates for a range of long-term development scenarios.

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13 HYDRO ENERGY29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMYGIShydrowiresPSHpumped hydropower storagepumped storage hydropowerresource assessmentsupply curvestechnical potential

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Rosenlieb, Evan, Heimiller, Donna, Cohen, Stuart. 2022-05-01. Closed-Loop Pumped Storage Hydropower Resource Assessment for the United States. Final Report on HydroWIRES Project D1: Improving Hydropower and PSH Representations in Capacity Expansion Models. https://doi.org/10.2172/1870821

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