Dilip Kuner
EUROPE’S biggest pumped storage facility with enough capacity to supply 10 million people with power for a day is earmarked for Spain.
Spanish giant Iberdrola is set to build the €1.5bn Conso II project at Vilariño de Conso near Ourense, Galicia.
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The plant will use surplus energy from solar power stations to pump water from a lower reservoir to a higher one. When additional electricity is needed, the water will flow back down through turbines to generate power.
The capacity of 1.8GW means Conso II will significantly contribute to Spain’s energy grid and provide a solution for storing renewable energy.
Construction, which is due to begin in 2025, is expected to create around 3,000 jobs over six years.
To reduce its visual impact, the majority of the Conso II plant will be located underground, with the project making use of the existing Bao and Cenza reservoirs.
Or Spain could build several huge ‘gravity storages’ from Swiss-US company ‘Energy Vault’. Gravity storage uses the same principle as a water pump reservoir, but without water. This would be a great advantage for a country with too much draughts like Spain.
Instead of water, gravity storage uses bricks made of waste stones which are piled up by a huge crane (similiar to pumping water to the upper reservoir) and deconstructs the pile, if electricity is needed for a while.
A drawback of gravity storage will be, that the huge pile of bricks cannot be hidden in a beautiful landscape.
A demonstration project from Energy Vault is already running at Rodong in Mainland China.