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PSH: A Water Battery for Clean Energy

Watch Argonne representatives show STEM students how pumped storage hydropower (PSH) is a “Water Battery for Clean Energy.” The video also shows the crucial role PSH — designed to be highly portable — plays in providing energy storage to balance electric grid operations and support variable generation resources such as wind and solar power.

Topics:
Batteries Electrification Energy Power

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    Transcript

    00:00:04 We put together an idea to build a small scale hydropower dam to let people have a hands on experience to understand how it works. We started thinking about this project as a way to reach out to students and the public about the importance of hydropower and in particular, pumped storage hydropower. After we had our initial concepts, we went to Frank Skrzecz to help build the structure and solve the issue of what material would be the best for this type of project. Then we brought in Jasmine Armstead who recently won a gold medal in engineering from the Dupage

    00:01:02 County ACT-SO program, and we wanted her to have a look and get her reaction to the pumped storage hydropower model. I am a senior, actually, and I've been participating in this program called ACT-SO and so with this program I've done STEM fields such as engineering, and I've done two projects pertaining to sustainable energy. So I'm planning to go to college, you know, to better understand more about sustainable energy and just ways to make people lives, people's lives better. So what is hydropower and how does it work? That's great question.

    00:01:36 Hydropower is a form of renewable energy, and it basically uses a big resevoir to store large amounts of water. And then we release the water to generate electricity. In addition to that, pumped storage hydropower can also pump the water in the lower reservoir back to the upper reservoir so that we can use it again, we convert electricity to potential energy. And then we store this energy and when we need it, we release water to convert this potential energy to electricity. So the way these things work is basically like a giant battery. If you think about the battery that you have for example, in your phone

    00:02:13 or in an electric car, you have to recharge it. So we provide electricity to the pump that is going to charge the pump storage hydro up. And the same way that it works with a car with a battery this giant water battery is just going to be discharged and power whatever you plugged into it. How big would you say a real life scale sized model would be? A real scale pumped storage hydropower can be actually as high as 50 story building. So it's very, very big. That's necessary if you wants these big pump storage hydro to deliver enough energy to power thousands of homes for several days.

    00:02:52 Why are you building this model? Well, building a small scale version like this is actually an opportunity for students like you to be able to see a smaller scale version of an important energy technology, actually a green and clean energy. I know that when you hear about green and clean energy. You must think about like this solar panel or wind turbine. Hydropower is also an important source of clean energy. And instead of sunshine and wind, it's actually a source of energy that you gets by moving water So we've planned to bring this model to classrooms for STEM fests so that students can come

    00:03:30 and have this model and understand how pumped storage hydropower is working and how we can utilize the water to generate electricity. Yeah, I know that's a really good way to just show students and they can be more interactive with it because seeing it in a classroom just like a picture or a diagram would just be boring, right? No one really wants to see that. So I do like that. Now, what about you, Jasmine? What would be your interests in this field? For me, I've researched a lot of information on sustainable energy, and I think that's really crucial to this world today.

    00:04:03 As you see, there's so much, you know, pollution and just climate change and so many things that are happening because we don't think of the fuel sources that we use. So I feel like sustainable energy is really crucial and is really important and something I'm actually interested in. Being a part of a sustainable energy journey would be really impactful. And so I hope to if I were to, you know, go on this career, right, just have a chance, you know, incorporate my beliefs and just want to make a change.