Proposal Papers for Policy Making and Governmental Action toward Low Carbon Society

LCS-FY2019-PP-03

Potential Capacity and Cost of Pumped-Storage Power in Japan (Vol. 2)

  • SDGs7
  • SDGs9
  • SDGs13

Summary

 Worldwide, there are an increasing number of countries that have variable renewable energy (VRE), such as solar power and wind power, accounting for over 20% of their annual power generation. Although in Japan it is still only about 6%, in the future, the ratio of VRE will increase with the large-scale introduction of renewable energy, so measures to stabilize the power system will be necessary.

 Power storage is considered an effective measure for system stabilization. In particular, pumped storage power is advantageous in terms of storage scale, response speed, being a power source with inertia, current cost, and other factors. In the previous report, the Low Carbon Society Strategy Center (LCS) showed that many decentralized pumped storage power plants can be constructed with reduced cost by using a dam suitable for pumped storage power as a lower pond among the 2,700 multipurpose dams distributed throughout the country. In this report, the storage capacity and distribution of the pumped-storage power that can be developed in all prefectures was investigated. Furthermore, this pumped-storage power is referred to as new pumped-storage power, and the storage capacities and costs were calculated when various conditions such as power generation facilities and dam water usage were changed.
 As a result, the construction cost was 39.5 JPY/Wh ~ 44.5 JPY/Wh and the power generation cost was 19.4 JPY/kWh ~ 20.4 JPY/kWh, depending on the conditions. While these costs are about 15% lower than the costs calculated in the previous report, there is room for further cost reduction by optimizing the operating conditions. In addition, it was estimated that the total storage capacity nationwide was 747 GWh/cycle (5h)/day to 2,170 GWh/cycle (5h)/day. This result showed that there is greater storage capacity of the new pumped-storage power than the storage battery capacity (360~510 GWh) estimated to be necessary for the low-carbon power supply system in 2050 (80~85% reduction from the current CO2 emissions originating from power supply).
 The new pumped-storage power is a promising energy storage system. In the future, it will be necessary to consider the installation of pumped-storage power, taking into account the diffusion status, regional characteristics, the relationship between cost and storage capacity, etc., and to properly design the equipment and operating plan.

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