Rye On A Roll: US Developer Greenlit For Massive Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Project On Brownfield
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For all the excitement over the up-and-coming generation of new energy storage technologies, good old fashioned pumped hydro still accounts for about 95% of utility-scale storage in the US, and its footprint is still growing. In the latest news, the Florida-based pumped storage firm Rye Development has just received a 40-year license for the proposed 1.2 gigawatt Goldendale Energy Storage Project in Washington State.
Long-Duration Energy Storage Is Coming For Your Fossil Fuels
Pumped hydropower does just what it says. During periods of low electricity demand, water is pumped to a reservoir at a higher elevation. When demand rises, water flows by gravity to a power station below. Pumped hydro can operate under a fossil energy scenario, but wind and solar offer a more sustainable, and economical, alternative.
Pumped storage facilities can run on an open-loop basis, charging and discharging a single reservoir from a nearby river. Or they can deploy two reservoirs in a closed-loop system, helping to alleviate concerns over water availability.
Rye Development has both kinds of pumped storage facilities in its portfolio. The Goldendale Energy Storage project is a closed-loop system and it checks more than a few sustainability and economic development boxes:
- Redevelops a brownfield privately owned property, the site of the former Columbia Gorge Aluminum smelter plant;
- Deploys existing road and transmission infrastructure associated with the existing 136.6-megawatt Tuolumne Wind Farm;
- Delivers electricity for 12 hours;
- Adds zero emission grid capacity to a region where electricity demand is expected to grow 30% in 10 years;
- Creates 3,000 construction jobs over 3-5 year period;
- Adds $10 million annually to Klickitat County revenue for schools and other civic infrastructure
The 12-hour period also supports long-duration energy storage, which the US Department of Energy has identified as a critical need for a future grid saturated with wind and solar power. The Energy Department defines long duration as meeting a 10-hour floor, with some future technologies reaching into multiple days, weeks, and whole seasons (see more long-duration background here).
Why Pumped Storage
The long duration future is already here with pumped storage, and new systems are also emerging. The California startup Noon Energy, for example, just reached a key milestone towards commercializing a 100-hour energy storage system based on fuel cell technology, and the Massachusetts firm Form Energy is looking forward to the first commercial deployment of its 100-hour iron-air battery at the Great River Energy project in Minnesota, an effort almost six years in the making.
Against this backdrop, it’s fair to ask why more pumped hydro facilities are needed to fill out the nation’s long duration energy storage profile. One answer is that pumped hydro is a long-established industry in the US, deploying proven materials and systems. The first utility-scale pumped storage facility was constructed in Connecticut in 1929.
As illustrated by the Goldendale’s 3-5 year construction time, some pumped hydro projects can be up and running faster than a typical fossil energy project. The opportunity to deploy existing brownfields, roads, and transmission infrastructure is another positive, alongside additional opportunities for floating solar power plants.
Under the current state of technology, some analyses also indicate that pumped hydro has a lower global warming impact than other forms of energy storage, in terms of emissions related to construction and materials. “Researchers found that PSH, on average, offered the lowest GWP when compared to compressed-air energy storage, utility-scale lithium-ion batteries, utility-scale lead-acid batteries, and vanadium redox flow batteries,” the Energy Department noted in a report posted in 2024, referencing data collected in 2022 and 2023.
More Pumped Hydro For The US
That doesn’t mean the end of the road for other systems. A movement is afoot to pair pumped hydro with other forms of energy storage to achieve additional flexibility and responsiveness. A new report from the Energy Department, for example, indicates that hydropower operators can earn new revenue, and save wear and tear on their turbines, by investing in on-site battery energy storage systems. The researchers found significant results when they modeled a 60-megawatt lithium-ion battery array with a duration of just two hours at an existing hydropower dam in Missouri.
The Energy Department plans to model the hydro-plus-battery combo at additional sites, firming up the case for both hydropower and energy storage in the nation’s power generation profile.
That raises the question … why is the Energy Department lending its seal of approval to renewable energy? After all, during the second term in office of US President Donald Trump, the Energy Department has shifted priorities in favor of nuclear and fossil energy. Nevertheless, the “American Energy Dominance” policy articulated by the White House does make room for some renewables, including biomass and geothermal as well as hydropower and related technologies.
Next Steps For US Hydropower
Over the past 30 years, the US hydropower industry has turned its attention away from new, Hoover-style hydropower dams, preferring to focus investor dollars on upgrading existing resources. Considering the age of the nation’s hydropower dams and pumped storage fleet, there is plenty of room to produce additional clean kilowatts by upgrading old turbines. Adding new turbines to existing dams is another potential opportunity.
Redeveloping brownfields for new pumped storage facilities aligns with the focus on re-using existing sites. Rye, for example, has also been working on the 266-megawatt coalfields-to-energy Lewis Ridge Pumped Storage Project in Kentucky. The Lewis Ridge project reached a key milestone last summer, when Rye submitted its Final License Application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
Rye is also the firm behind the proposed 400-megawatt Swan Lake Energy Storage project in Oregon, and the 500-megawatt Western Navajo 1 Pumped Storage project in Arizona.
The Western Navajo project is of interest because it will be located on Tribal land in the vicinity of the 2.25-gigawatt Navajo Generating Station, a coal power plant that shut down in 2019. Once notorious as one of the nation’s largest single sources of greenhouse gas emissions, NGS is not likely to make the Energy Department’s growing list of aging coal power plants to be supported. The facility was largely demolished in 2020 and the grounds were re-seeded, leaving only a few buildings behind. Converting the site to other uses has been challenging, though its railway infrastructure is a potential attraction.
Another Navajo Nation pumped storage project to keep an eye on is the proposed 1.5-gigawatt, 70-hour Carrizo Four Corners Pumped Storage Hydropower project in New Mexico, a collaboration between the Navajo Nation and New Mexico State University, with other partners. The 70-hour duration is aimed at alleviating seasonal swings in electricity demand and water availability, while filling in during periods when solar and wind generation are reduced.
Image: The proposed Goldendale Energy Storage Project in Washington State is one step closer to adding 1.2 gigawatts of pumped hydropower storage to the nation’s renewable energy profile (cropped, courtesy of Rye Development via email).
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