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Thought Solar Was Hard to Permit? Try Pumped

Storage!

April 18, 2011 By Susan Kraemer 6 Comments

When you consider the environmental benefits of solar power for providing electricity, it has always seemedunfair that it takes so much bureaucracy to overcome to get it built, even in the nation’s leader, California.

Whereas a natural gas power plant sails through the permitting process with ease, solar can take years and betripped up by technicalities that don’t slow the permitting of polluting power plants.

But compared with the difficulties of getting solar projects built, pumped hydro storage is almost impossible,

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ught Solar Was Hard to Permit? Try Pumped Storage! - CleanTechnica http://cleantechnica.com/2011/04/18/thought-solar-was-hard-to-permit-t...

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like wind and solar, so this delay in storage is a real roadblock. Last year 25 Terawatt hours of wind power hadto be idled for lack of energy storage.

Because it is a hydro resource, pumped storage is governed by the notoriously slow pace of FERC permitting.

Pumped-hydro projects can literally take decades.

One company that has successfully stayed more or less in business throughout the permitting process fortraditional pumped hydro storage is Symbiotics, which is based in Utah. They received preliminary permits fromFERC for two Utah pumped-hydro projects, one that has a capacity of 700 MW in Rich County, due online in2020, and another, in Piutte County, Utah, with a capacity of about 1,330 MW, due online in 2017.

During this long drawn out process, Symbiotics was bought out by a new kind of hydro-power startup,Riverbank Power, which acquired Symbiotics in a merger a few months ago. Riverbank Power is the highlyinnovative company we wrote about last year that uses gravity under rivers to store hydro power: Pump HydroUnderground to Store Wind Power.

Vince Lamarra, founder and former CEO of Symbiotics, and now vice president of project development atRiverbank Power, is sanguine about the time it takes to get permitted and built; about a decade.

“In a best-case scenario, you might be able to get a federal license in five years, but then it takes another twoyears for the engineering and then three more years to build a pumped-storage project, and they cost about $1.5billion to $2 billion to build, because they are very large facilities,” he said.

Learning from the experience of past failures to get permits by Symbiotics, the new merged company looks forsites where it is possible to develop man-made closed-loop systems, like Riverbank Power innovated.

Closed-loop systems use upper and lower reservoirs connected by sealed penstocks, and often use water

acquired from irrigation or other groundwater rights holders. Because these are man-made water reservoirs,there is minimal environmental impact. This speeds permitting, but makes for a much larger footprint, withassociated expense.

Fortunately, under the much more renewable-friendly new FERC director, Jon Wellinghoff , FERC now has afire under it. Since 2008, 36 other projects in the West have received preliminary permits, and there are 9 newapplications.

Image: Pumped storage on Lake Michigan

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

Previous stories

Equal Pay for Negawatts and Megawatts Thanks to FERCAnother ARPA-E Winner: General Compression’s Renewable Energy Storage Ramps Up in 30 SecondsFERC Wants Smaller, Faster, Distributed Storage to Speed Renewables

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8 16/03/2012 19:53



Filed Under: Water, Wind Energy Tagged With: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, hydropower, Jon Wellinghoff , pumped-storage, Pumped-storage hydroelectricity, Riverbank Power,Symbiotics, wind power

About Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, Earthtechling, and GreenProphet and has been published at Ecoseed,NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow and Scientific American.

As a former serial entrepreneur in product design she brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention: solving climate change is the mother of allnecessities! As a lover of history and sci fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in theseinteresting times.

Follow Susan @dotcommodity on twitter.

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Potential Electricity System -- Part

4

Development, Hurts

"Traditional" Energy

Another Cheap Way to

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Power

"Drill, Baby, Drill" Can

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An important topic. A few points, however:

(1) The article is a little misleading on challenges of licensing pumped storage because it is not



8 16/03/2012 19:53



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licensing process. Also, these projects have some elements that make them more complex, such as Lake

Elsinore's dependency on a 35-mile transmission line through a national forest.

(2) The article omitted mention of the newly introduced Hydropower Improvement Act, which has

bipartisan support, and one clause of which asks FERC to shorten the licensing process for low-impact

process to two years.

(3) The concept of closed-loop pumped storage was actually brought to the market by Peak Power

Corporation back in the early 1990's. The firm filed with FERC for a dozen smaller, "modular" pumped

storage projects that would not utilize natural waterways. But the market, again, wasn't receptive at the

time.

(4) There are many new closed-loop projects being introduced for purposes of integrating renewable

resources, including twelve from Gridflex Energy, LLC. Each site is unique and each will be on its own

timeline. With smart site selection, smaller, compact sites, and a faster-paced timeline, Gridflex believes

that its projects could be online within 8 years, possibly sooner.

Thanks for these points, great additions.

Good post Susan Kraemer. Pumped storage is an option for Renewables,

especially for wind, where many times the resource doesn't match the utility electric loads, pumped

storage may be a viable option to add value to the wind or other renewable energy resource.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India

Wind Energy Expert

E-mail: [email protected]



8 16/03/2012 19:53



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