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

LCS-FY2020-PP-01

Potential Capacity and Cost of Pumped-Storage Power in Japan (Vol. 3)

  • SDGs7
  • SDGs9
  • SDGs13

Summary

 With the share of variable renewable energy (VRE), such as solar power and wind power, increasing as a percentage of annual power generation worldwide, various measures to stabilize power grids will be required in due course and the importance of pumped storage power as a means of power storage and regulation is therefore attracting attention.

 As a source of power that offers storage at scale, low facility costs, fast responsiveness,and inertia, pumped storage power, which is one of the power storage methods, is considered to be an effective power storage system for stabilizing grids. Japan has about 40 pumped storage power plants nationwide, but most of them are large-scale power plants with a capacity of 0.2-2 GW, rendering them unsuitable for adjusting distributed VRE. In the future, low-cost small and medium-sized distributed pumped storage power plants will be needed. The FY2019 proposal paper showed that a large number of distributed pumped storage power plants can be constructed at a lower cost. Under this proposal, of the 2,700 or so existing multipurpose dams across Japan, 931 dams suitable for pumped storage power would be used as lower reservoirs. This method is called new pumped storage power. The resultant potential total nationwide storage capacity was calculated at 750-2,200 GWh/cycle/day. It should be noted that these capacity figures are based on the assumption that the full volume of available water in the dam can be stored in the upper reservoir regardless of the topography around the dam. However, in reality, the volume of water stored in the upper reservoirs (the number of upper reservoirs) that can be constructed will be limited by the topography.
 In this proposal paper, in order to improve the accuracy of the potential storage capacity figures, the upper reservoir construction site was selected on the basis of the actual topography and road conditions, while the total construction cost of each new pumped storage power plant and its potential storage capacity were calculated individually. As a result, the feasible nationwide storage capacity was found to be 585-1,390 GWh/cycle/day,

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