Exploring the Multifaceted Role of Pumped Storage at Niagara
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 142, Issue 10
Abstract
Energy systems are not only intrinsically interesting, because power is itself of importance; they raise fascinating trade-offs in other areas particularly since there are almost invariably technical, economic, and ecological dimensions to these considerations. This paper illustrates this interplay through a staged process that starts with a direct optimization approach for a pumped-storage facility with the simple goal of achieving an optimal profit given well-forecasted flows and energy prices. Sir Adam Beck Pumping Generating Station, located on the Niagara River, is selected as the subject of the model application. When analyzed for probable changes in current electricity rates, a 1–24% reduction in profit is realized depending on the month. Interestingly, relative to current design the model predicts only modest profit throughout the year with an increasing reservoir footprint. Since considerations other than the purely technical quickly arise, this paper considers the trade-off between hydropower and ecological targets imposed by the 1950 Niagara River Treaty. This exploratory study makes no pretense to forecast likely or advisable developments, but rather considers a possible role that a pumped-storage operation might hypothetically play in the Ontario spot market.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Afshar, M. H. (2012). “Large scale reservoir operation by constrained particle swarm optimization algorithms.” J. Hydro-Environ. Res., 6(1), 75–87.
Aggarwal, S. K., Saini, L. M., and Kumar, A. (2008). “Electricity price forecasting in Ontario electricity market using wavelet transform in artificial neural network based model.” Int. J. Control Autom. Syst., 6(5), 639–650.
Auditor General of Ontario. (2011). 2011 Annual Rep. Queen’s Printer for Ontario, Toronto.
Ayodele, T. R., and Ogunjuyigbe, A. S. O. (2015). “Mitigation of wind power intermittency: Storage technology approach.” Renewable Sustainable Energy Rev., 44, 447–456.
Bosona, T. G., and Gebresenbet, G. (2010). “Modeling hydropower plant system to improve its reservoir operation.” J. Water Resour. Environ. Eng., 2(4), 87–94.
British Petroleum Company. (2015). BP statistical review of world energy, London.
Caralis, G., Papantonis, D., and Zervos, A. (2012). “The role of pumped storage systems towards the large scale wind integration in the Greek power supply system.” Renewable Sustainable Energy Rev., 16(5), 2558–2565.
Catalão, J. P. S., Pousinho, H. M. I., and Contreras, J. (2012). “Optimal hydro scheduling and offering strategies considering price uncertainty and risk management.” Energy, 37(1), 237–244.
Chang, M. K., Eichman, J. D., Mueller, F., and Samuelsen, S. (2013). “Buffering intermittent renewable power with hydroelectric generation: A case study in California.” Appl. Energy, 112, 1–11.
Evans, A., Strezov, V., and Evans, T. J. (2009). “Assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies.” Renewable Sustainable Energy Rev., 13(5), 1082–1088.
Fleten, S. E., and Kristoffersen, T. K. (2008). “Short-term hydropower production planning by stochastic programming.” Comput. Oper. Res., 35(8), 2656–2671.
Gallant, P. (2015). WCO–Wind concerns Ontario, 〈http://www.windconcernsontario.ca/ontario-surplus-power-exports-cost-consumers-in-january/〉 (Aug. 8, 2015).
German Advisory Council. (2011). “Pathways towards a 100% renewable electricity system.” 〈http://www.umweltrat.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/02_Special_Reports/2011_10_Special_Report_Pathways_renewables.pdf?__blob=publicationFile〉 (Aug. 8, 2015).
Government of Canada. (2015). Global affairs Canada, 〈http://www.treaty-accord.gc.ca/text-texte.aspx?id=100418〉 (Jun. 8, 2013).
Griffith, R. E., and Stewart, R. A. (1961). “A nonlinear programming technique for optimization of continuous processing systems.” Manage. Sci., 7(4), 379–392.
Haguma, D., Leconte, R., Krau, S., Côté, P., and Brissette, F. (2010). “Water resources optimization method in the context of climate change.” Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 04014051.
Helset, A., Gjelsvik, A., Mo, B., and Linnet, Ú. (2013). “A model for optimal scheduling of hydro thermal systems including pumped-storage and wind power.” IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 7(12), 1426–1434.
IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator). (2015). Ontario’s electricity hub, 〈http://www.ieso.ca/〉 (Jul. 31, 2015).
Ingebretsen, E., and Johansen, T. H. G. (2014). “The profitability of pumped hydro storage in Norway: A study of six pumped hydro storage plants.” Master’s thesis, Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). (2011). Special report on renewable energy sources and climate change mitigation, 〈http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/〉 (Aug. 7, 2015).
Kamodkar, R. U., and Regulwar, D. G. (2013). “Multipurpose reservoir operating policies: A fully fuzzy linear programming approach.” J. Agric. Sci. Technol., 15(6), 1261–1274.
Kanakasabapathy, P. (2013). “Economic impact of pumped storage power plant on social welfare of electricity market.” Electr. Power Energy Syst., 45(1), 187–193.
Kusakana, K. (2015). “Feasibility analysis of river off-grid hydrokinetic systems with pumped hydro storage in rural applications.” Energy Convers. Manage., 96, 352–362.
Latorre, J. M., Cerisola, S., Ramos, A., Perea, A., and Bellido, R. (2014). “Coordinated hydropower plant simulation for multireservoir systems.” Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 216–227.
Linares, P., Santos, F. J., and Ventosa, M. (2008). “Coordination of carbon reduction and renewable energy support policies.” Clim. Policy, 8(4), 377–394.
Maricic, T., Haber, D., and Pejovic, S. (2009). “Niagara pump generating station proven functionality unique in Canada.” Proc., IEEE Electrical Power and Energy Conf., NJ.
Maxim, A. (2014). “Sustainability assessment of electricity generation technologies using weighted multi-criteria decision analysis.” Energy Policy, 65, 284–297.
Mo, L., Lu, P., Wang, C., and Zhou, Z. (2013). “Short-term hydro generation scheduling of Three Gorges-Gezhouba cascaded hydropower plants using hybrid MACS-ADE approach.” Energy Convers/ Manage., 76, 260–273.
Moeini, R., Afshar, A., and Afshar, M. H. (2011). “Fuzzy rule-based model for hydropower reservoirs operation.” Electr. Power Energy Syst., 33(2), 171–178.
Neufville, R. D. (1990). Applied systems analysis: Engineering planning and technology management, McGraw-Hill.
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). (2013). Tides & currents, 〈http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/waterlevels.html?id=9063007〉 (Dec. 27, 2013).
Ontario Power Generation. (2010). 〈http://www.opg.com/about/regulatory-affairs/Documents/Issue%2006.02.pdf〉 (Dec. 1, 2012).
Palacios-Gomez, F., Lasdon, L., and Engquist, M. (1982). “Nonlinear optimization by successive linear programming.” Manage. Sci., 28(10), 1106–1120.
Prasad, S. A., Umamahesh, N. V., and Viswanath, G. K. (2012). “Short-term real-time reservoir operation for irrigation.” Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 149–158.
Rangoni, B. (2012). “A contribution on electricity storage: The case of hydro-pumped storage appraisal and commissioning in Italy and Spain.” Util. Policy, 23, 31–39.
Rehman, S., Al-Hadhrami, L. M., and Alam, M. M. (2015). “Pumped hydro energy storage system: A technological review.” Renewable Sustainable Energy Rev., 44, 586–598.
Salevid, K. (2013). Market requirements for pumped storage profitability, 〈http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:661286/FULLTEXT01.pdf〉 (Aug. 2, 2015).
Sharma, R. N., Chand, N., Sharma, V., and Yadav, D. (2015). “Decision support system for operation, scheduling, and optimization of hydropower plant in Jammu and Kashmir region.” Renewable Sustainable Energy Rev., 43, 1099–1113.
Sousa, J. A. M., Teixeira, F., and Faias, S. (2014). “Impact of a price-maker pumped storage hydro unit on the integration of wind energy in power systems.” Energy, 69, 3–11.
Steffen, B. (2012). “Prospects for pumped-hydro storage in Germany.” Energy Policy, 45, 420–429.
Zafirakis, D., Chalvatzis, K. J., Baiocchi, G., and Daskalakis, G. (2013). “Modeling of financial incentives for investments in energy storage systems that promote the large-scale integration of wind energy.” Appl. Energy, 105, 138–154.
Zareipour, H., Bhattacharya, K., and Cañizares, C. A. (2007). “Electricity market price volatility: The case of Ontario.” Energy Policy, 35(9), 4739–4748.
Zareipour, H., Cañizares, C. A., Bhattacharya, K., and Thompson, J. (2006). “Application of public-domain market information to forecast Ontario’s wholesale electricity prices.” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., 21(4), 1707–1717.
Zhang, S., Andrews-Speed, P., and Perera, P. (2015). “The evolving policy regime for pumped storage hydroelectricity in China: A key support for low-carbon energy.” Appl. Energy, 150, 15–24.
Zhu, J., Jordan, G., and Ihara, S. (2000). “The market for spinning reserve and its impacts on energy prices.” IEEE Power Engineering Society Winter Meeting, Vol. 2, NJ, 1202–1207.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 142 • Issue 10 • October 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 14, 2015
Accepted: Feb 4, 2016
Published online: Jun 13, 2016
Published in print: Oct 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Nov 13, 2016
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.