Pumped Up Power | Green Energy News

February 9, 2003 – Vol.7 No.46

PUMPED UP POWER.

The wind doesn’t always blow. But the wind often blows when people are sound asleep in darkened houses. So as not to let the nighttime wind go to waste, energy storage devices can be used to save that energy for later use - when it’s needed and when it can be sold at higher rates.

If the land near the wind farm is mountainous (and people approve) pumped storage - water pumped to high elevations, then released to flow back to lower elevations to generate electricity - can be used to store off-peak wind energy.

Vattenfall Europe has nearly completed construction of one of the largest pumped storage stations in Germany - a facility that holds 12 million cubic meters of water. The upper basin of the 1060 megawatt Goldisthal station is built into a mountain cave 300 meters (965 feet) above the lower. In off-peak hours the upper basin is filled over a ten hour period. When power is needed flood gates open and the water cascades downhill for eight hours turning the facility’s four 265 megawatt hydroelectric turbine generators.

It takes only one or two minutes for the facility to reach full generating capacity. Visit Vattenfall Europe at http://www.vattenfall.de/ .