DOE Report Reveals Benefits of Hydropower for Energy Storage

According to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), closed-loop pumped storage hydropower has the lowest global warming potential (GWP) compared to other grid-scale energy storage technologies.

The NREL study compared pumped storage hydropower to four other technologies, including compressed-air energy storage, utility-scale lithium-ion batteries, utility-scale lead-acid, and vanadium redox flow batteries. Findings are based on 39 preliminary designs from 35 sites in the United States. revealed that the average pumped storage hydropower facility has a storage capacity of 835 megawatts and delivers about 2,060 gigawatt hours of stored energy each year.