Former Australian Prime Minister and current president of the International Hydropower Association (IHA) Malcolm Turnbull has penned an open letter to Rishi Sunak stating that the UK has “almost 7GW of shovel-ready pumped storage hydropower projects with over 135GWh storage capacity”.
Disclosed in the letter, Turnbull outlines that the technology is ready to contribute to the decarbonisation of the UK and bolstering energy security. Should these shovel-ready projects all be built, this would increase the UK’s energy storage capacity five-fold.
Referring to the recent LDES government consultation, the letter outlines that this is a welcome development and will support the development of a policy mechanism to enable the rapid deployment of LDES technologies such as PSH.
Technologies such as PSH will be critical to the UK’s net zero transition. With the rapid deployment of variable and intermittent generation technologies such as solar and wind in the UK, energy storage technologies are required to ensure the security of supply, particularly on days when there is low generation.
Gas peaker plants have traditionally been utilised to ensure the security of supply in the UK, but these plants are not compatible with net zero and must be substituted for zero-carbon technologies. PSH and battery technologies could facilitate this.
This article first appeared on Solar Power Portal’s sister publication Current±.