Water battery: Riverbank Power brings new twist to pumped storage
I have a feature in today’s Toronto Star about a local company called Riverbank Power, founded by a former wind developer who’s determined to open up opportunities for large-scale energy storage across North America. Riverbank does pumped hydro storage, but not like conventional projects that require the right geography and topology (i.e. a large natural reservoir hundreds of metres over lake level).
Riverbank depends more on geology. It looks for brownfield sites that are located next to a large body of water and transmission lines (with adequate capacity). It then digs a few deep holes to figure out the rock conditions. If the rock is hard and if the site meets all other conditions, it will excavate massive caverns 600 metres below the surface that can safely contain 3.8 billion litres of water.
Sounds crazy ambitious, eh? It is, but it’s also something that’s done all the time by the mining industry. The technology is there and the excavation techniques are well proven. After digging such caverns, Riverbank would install four 250-megawatt hydro turbines next to them, then dig four connecting shafts up the surface that open up into a lake or large river.
The idea is to let the water drain down into the caverns to generate power during times of peak electricity demand. The design would allow 1,000 MW of generation over six hours. The water, temporarily stored in the caverns, would then be pumped back up to the surface during off-peak demand when electricity is cheap or when wind-energy is ample but not needed. John Douglas, founder and CEO of Riverbank, has crunched the numbers and figures such a facility could be built within five years and, as a peaker facility, would be competitive with natural gas-fired generation. He sees it as a way of unlocking the value of renewables without having to use natural gas plants as shadow generation.
Why is this better than conventional pumped storage? For one, there aren’t many locations around North America that are ideal for pumped storage that haven’t already been built. Those that are available are too remote and would involve the flooding of huge swaths of land, something that’s heavily frowned upon — moreso these days. The remote ones also require transmission, which adds huge cost to the projects (and complexity — i.e. nimbyism) and often makes the power they generate uneconomical. Riverbank, however, can choose to build close to heavily populated areas where the power is needed, close to transmission, close to water, and in willing communities, as long as the rock conditions are right. The actual site is also underground, with the exception of a big-box building that functions as a substation.
Riverbank has signed agreements to build in Maine (on the site of a decommissioned nuclear plant, the Maine Yankee) and New Jersey. It has shortlisted 15 ideal sites and plans to build on five of them, including one in Ontario that hasn’t been announced, by 2014. Former Ontario premier David Peterson is Riverbank’s chairman, and it’s biggest financial backer is New York-based investment giant BlackRock Inc.
It will be interesting to see the kind of traction this company gets over the next few years, particularly under a pro-renewables Obama administration.
Tags: pumped storage, Riverbank Power
Tyler Hamilton is associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and former business columnist for the Toronto Star. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
How about old mine sites? Wrong shape or too leaky?
March 24th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Too remote, typically. Would make a site not much better from a transmission and location perspective as conventional pumped storage.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:07 am
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March 30th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I wonder what the temperature differentials are? The net effect on a water body’s core and surface temperatures need to be brought into the light on projects of this scale especially as weather and ecology is dependent on these factors.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:35 am
@ Tom:
You raise a good point, but I think any significant differential would cease to exist after a few fills.
April 11th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Here’s the opposite of the water battery, yet still calling itself green; a url to the new Osram/Sylvania ECOLight Water Powered Shower Light.
http://www.eco-can.ca/eco-news/2009/3/9/ecolight-water-powered-shower-light.html
Now we can use the City’s mains pressure to drive our own little turbines. As if that were a breakthrough. It’s the equivalent of piping our municipal cold water through a radiator with a fan behind it for free air-conditioning. The best it does is provide us an excellent example of shining a light onto a nice sudsy green wash!
April 14th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
It uses more energy than it produces, solely to make a profit. This is not the future of energy production. It’s the product of an investment banker looking to make more money. Let’s think about the environment and the future, please.
April 15th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
BP, yes, like any battery, this uses more power than it produces. But it solves part of our enegy problem by storing power when we have an excess (like during daylight if we’re using solar, or while there’s wind if we’re using wind turbines) and provides us power when we actually need it.
Nuclear has the signifignt problem that it’s can’t load-follow. ie we can’t partially slow down the nuclear reaction, or speed it up fast enough to follow loads on our power network. Our relaince on nuclear means we create a surplus we don’t store (we sell) and then we have to augment peaks with coal and/or natural gas. Wind and solar also don’t generate their power on our demand, but on the day’s sun pattern and by weather patterns. We’re not going to be able to adjust when we need power to suit the weather, nor only use our lights when the sun is shining. So this is one way to store the generated power for those periods when we actually need it.
And like any storage mechanism, it ain’t perfect, but it does help.
May 27th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Is there really 1000 MW for 6 hours ?
What is the effectivity of the turbine?
I think, the potential energy of 3,8 bn litres in 600 meters is 6200 MWh, so your calculatino would assume 100% effectivity ? Am I right ?
July 21st, 2009 at 11:32 am
Riverbank Power says this will help enable the development of new renewable sources of intermittant power like wind and we definitely need more of that. In my opinion this is worth a shot. It will be interesting to follow.