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State Grid of China switches on world’s largest pumped-hydro station (pv-magazine.com)
21 points by philipkglass on Jan 4, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



This pumped hydroelectric storage plant has a maximum power rating of 3.6 gigawatts and a storage capacity of 6.6 terawatt hours. That storage capacity is enough to buffer the annual output of a French CP2 nuclear reactor [1].

According to this article the project only cost 1.89 billion dollars, though another [2] puts it at 3 billion dollars. Either way it's a project of staggering scale completed at a surprisingly low cost.

Note that this pumped hydro project has the highest power rating of any pumped storage project at 3.6 gigawatts. The Bath County pumped storage project, while rated for only 3 gigawatts of power, has a greater energy capacity of 24 terawatt hours:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Laurent_Nuclear_Power_Pl... 12.9 terawatt hours generated from two CP2 reactors.

[2] https://renewablesnow.com/news/chinas-state-grid-powers-up-3...


What are the drawbacks of these vs Lithium Ion grid batteries? Seems much cheaper for similar round trip efficiency.




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