Pumped Storage Hydro

3.6 GW Fengning pumped storage to power Beijing Winter Olympics

The State Grid Corporation of China recently announced the operation of the 3.6 GW Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station, which will ensure the Beijing Winter Olympics is green, according to a statement. 

The plant is located in Fengning County, Hebei Province. The project was started in 2013 and has 12 reversible pump-turbine generators. Each unit has a total capacity of 300 MW. The project is expected to generate 6.612 billion KWh of energy annually and has an annual pumped power of 8.716 billion KWh.

The project has 190 caverns, making it one of the largest underground factories in the world. It is also one of the world’s first pumped-storage power stations connected to the flexible DC grid, as a result of a connection made to the Zhangbeirou DC converter station. The plant will provide 600 MW of capacity to Beijing and Zhangjiakou, the host cities of the Winter Olympics.

The integration also enables the plant to participate in load regulation and regional stability coordination and control. The system is used for reliability and increased integration of solar and wind for resilience of the regional grid network.

The launch of the system comes as grid operators explore various forms of long-duration energy storage to leverage renewable energy as baseload power and to address the fluctuating nature of clean resources.

Pumped storage is the most mature large-capacity energy storage method at present, owing to functionalities such as large capacity, peak regulation, frequency regulation, phase regulation, energy storage, system backup and black start.

The Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station falls under efforts by the Chinese government to ease the pressure of peak regulation, enhance energy flexibility, improve local economic development through circular services and promote energy conservation and emission reduction and improve the safety and reliability of energy system, according to the Chinese National Energy Administration.

The plant is expected to avoid the use of 480,000 tons of standard coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.2 million tons each year.

The project is one of the five pumped storage power stations that State Grid Corporation enacted in 2021.

This article was originally published on Power Engineering International and is reprinted with permission.