NREL maps out 35TWh of potential PHES sites across US
Researchers at US national Lab National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have mapped out 3.5TW/35TWh of potential pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) sites across the country.
Some 43 existing PHES plants totalling 23GW already account for 93% of the US’ grid-scale energy storage, according to the federal Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. The NREL’s study sought to determine the potential for new potential capacity, looking at places for closed-loop systems with no ongoing hydrologic relationship with existing natural water bodies.
Using its modelling, and after filtering by various technical potential filters, it found 14,846 potential systems totalling 3.5TW of power and 35TWh of energy. It focused on ten-hour duration systems for simplicity and its cost-competitiveness compared to lithium-ion batteries.
The findings are available to view and filter in an interactive map on the NREL website and you can read the whole report here.
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Spanish government to launch 5.8GW tender for renewable and energy storage grid access
Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge is set to launch a 5,844MW tender for renewable energy and energy storage to access grid capacity across 17 nodes of the network.
The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge published a draft order announcing the plans last week (10 June). The 17 nodes which have been published, one for each autonomous community, chosen based on them being the most in-demand in each region. Although the draft order said that Catalonia, Valencia and Madrid will have two each.
The nodes range in size from the Castile and Leon 95MW to the Valencian community’s 631MW (though this may be made up of two nodes). All 17 add up to 5,844MW.
The award criteria includes how in advance of the commitment date the resource can be online; the degree of self-subsistence of a resource; the socioeconomic impact on the local economy as measured by job creation, local re-investment and lower expropriation of land and, lastly, the carbon footprint of the project.
529MW of energy storage projects in the Philippines invited to under system impact studies
The Department of Energy (DOE) of the Philippines issued clearance to undertake system impact studies (SIS) to 13 energy storage projects between February and May 2022.
The 13 projects add up to 529MW of power and 829MWh of energy, although all but one of them are one-hour systems. The 200MW/500MWh Bugallon Energy Storage Project, granted SIS clearance in February, is by far the largest project and is being proposed by ‘3 Barracuda Energy Corp’.
Other projects in the 51-strong list for January-May include hydroelectric, solar, wind and biogas plants, as well as traditional fossil fuel generating combined cycle gas facilities.
Yesterday (June 13), Energy-Storage.news reported that a solar-plus-storage project with up to 4.5GWh of BESS was proposed in the Philippines by a billionaire. It was only in February that the first co-located resource in the country came online. A number of major power generation companies are developing large-scale standalone BESS projects to deliver frequency regulation and ancillary services, with one, SMC Global Power Holdings, contracting for a 1GW pipeline with the likes of Fluence, Wartsila and ABB.
