Energy storage systems are the key to meeting Europe’s renewables targets, Robert Williams reports.
Pumped hydropower the green battery
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or many years, a key challenge in the energy sector has been how to store energy for when it’s most needed. As we move towards relying on renewable energy, it becomes even more pressing to have alternatives, when “the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow”. It sounds straightforward but has proved remarkably difficult to address – which is why we still have to have back up renewables with electricity generated from oil, gas and nuclear power stations. A huge amount of research work has been devoted to storing energy. Supercapacitators, lithium batteries, solid state batteries, hydrogen cells, there have been no shortage of options. The European Commission sees renewable energy as playing a major role in fighting 4 Industry Europe
climate change, as well as being capable of providing Europe with affordable and secure energy. While solar and wind energy have received much attention – and are already significant in Europe’s energy mix – other renewable energy sources, such as hydropower, are likely to grow in significance. This is partly because Europe’s 2020 target of 20 per cent of energy from renewables means adding an even greater amount of renewable energy, which some estimates put at between 35 per cent and 40 per cent According to the International Hydropower Association, “hydropower is a versatile, flexible technology that at its smallest can power a single home, and at its largest can supply industry and the public with renewable electricity on a national and even regional scale.”
In 2016, hydro-electric power supplied 71 per cent of all renewable electricity generated, accounting for 16.4 per cent of the entire world’s renewable and hydrocarbon electricity generation. In the EU hydro accounts for over 14 per cent of all prime electricity, and 70 per cent of all hydropower is from five main countries - Sweden, France, Italy, Austria and Spain.
Storing hydro power Norway is one country that could become, at least partially, the “green battery of Europe” by using hydropower plants to provide extra electricity. The existing network of hydropower plants could be developed to instantly boost power supplies across the continent. As the sources of energy change, power systems will have to become more flexible, so they can balance generation and consump-
