Energy shift creates opening for ‘world’s largest batteries’
LUDINGTON, Mich. — Sprawled like a gigantic swimming pool atop a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan is an asphaltand-clay pond holding enough water to produce electricity for 1.6 million households.
It’s part of the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant, which uses simple technology: Water is piped from a lower reservoir — the lake, in this case — to an upper one, then released downhill through supersized turbines.
Supporters call these systems “the world’s largest batteries” because they hold vast amounts of potential energy for use when needed for the power grid.
The hydropower industry considers pumped storage the best answer to a question hovering over the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy to address climate change: where to get power when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
“I wish we could build 10 more of these. I love ’em,” Eric Gustad, community affairs manager for Consumers Energy, said during a tour of the Ludington facility.
But the utility based in Jackson, Mich., has no such plans.
Constructing a new one “doesn’t make financial sense,” Gustad said. “Unless we get some help from the state or federal government, I don’t see it happening any time soon.”
Stuck in neutral
The company’s decision illustrates the challenges facing pumped storage in the U.S., where these systems account for about 93 percent of utility-scale energy in reserve. While analysts foresee soaring demand for power storage, the industry’s growth has lagged.
The nation has 43 pumped storage facilities with a combined capacity of 22 gigawatts, the output of that many nuclear plants. Yet just one small operation has been added since 1995 — and it’s unknown how many of more than 90 planned can overcome economic, regulatory and logistical barriers that force long delays.
Three projects have obtained licenses from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but none are being built.
By contrast, more than 60 are being built worldwide, mostly in Europe, India, China and Japan.
The industry is lobbying for an investment tax credit similar to what solar and wind get. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan includes the tax break but is stuck in Congress.
Pumped storage dates from the early 1930s. But most systems were built decades later to warehouse excess electricity from nuclear plants and release it when needed.
Location
Using computer mapping, Australian National University engineers identified more than 600,000 “potentially feasible” pumped storage sites worldwide — including 32,000 in the U.S. — that could store 100 times the energy needed to support a global renewable electricity network.
But the study didn’t examine whether sites would meet environmental or cultural protection standards or be commercially viable. Its website acknowledged, “Many or even most … may prove to be unsuitable.”
Environmentalists are cool toward pumped storage because reservoirs typically are formed by hydropower dams, which block fish pathways, damage water quality and emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Also, most plants continuously draw water from rivers.
Competitive future
As the market for stored energy grows, new technologies are emerging.
Texas-based Quidnet Energy has developed a pumped storage offshoot that forces water underground, holds it amid rock layers and releases it to power turbines. The company announced a project in March with San Antonio’s municipal utility.
A 2016 Energy Department report said the U.S. network has a potential for 36 gigawatts of new pumped storage capacity.
“We don’t think pumped storage is the be-all, end-all but it’s a vital part of our storage future,” said Cameron Schilling, vice president of markets for the hydropower association. “You can’t decarbonize the system without it.”