A study of hydro and pumped storage hydropower in Northern Norway

Abstract

"The role of renewable sources of energy in combating climate change cannot be over-emphasized. Profound measures taken especially by the European Union (EU) in reducing global rising temperatures has seen massive development of renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind. This strategic plan taken by the EU has led to the an increase in national efforts to promote further development of renewable energy systems as well as increased exchange of power between member states due to the challenge of storing energy generated from these sources. If much energy is going to be produced from these sources, this challenge calls for an increasing need for energy storage to balance power by compensating for the difference between production and consumption. The growing synergy among EU member states has made it possible for Norway to be selected as the “Green Battery” of Europe by developing Pumped Storage Hydropower (PSH) plants as a means of storage technology, the most feasible among all the storage technologies available today. This is achieved by using “surplus” power to pump water to an upper reservoir which can be release back into a lower reservoir to generate power when there is demand. With the topography of Norway favoring the development of PSH schemes, much research has been carried out especially in Southern Norway and it is estimated that 20 000 MW of power is possible to be generated. This report carries a review specifically on possible sites for the development of PSH in Northern Norway. Results gathered from the screening process in the region shows that a total of 84 pairs of reservoirs can be used, summing up to 19 different potential PSH projects in Northern Norway. The power generation from these PSH projects is estimated to be 25 000 MW. The total cost from an estimated cost analysis reaches to about 526 Million Kroner. The study further carries out a detailed analysis on the proposed Isvatn-Langvatnet PSH project by running the PSH Model on the chosen reservoir pairs with wind data from the North Sea (in our case). The water level fluctuation used for the reservoirs in the study is 13cm/h for the HRWL and LRWL. Considering factors such as turbine capacity and free reservoir volumes, it is observed that there is 1 hour having no balancing demand with 160 hours also having no actual balancing operation. Number of hours have a balancing demand but no actual operation is 159 hours, this is due to the limitation of shared capacity and limitation of the lower reservoir. The outcome of the simulation process, considers factors which optimizes the mode of the PSH power plant in terms of the economical and its effective operation, which was also used in the hypothesis cost estimation for the PSH projects."