Bear Swamp Generating Station or Jack Cockwell Station is a pumped-storage hydroelectric underground power station that straddles the Deerfield River in Rowe and Florida, Massachusetts.
The reservoir covers 88 acres (36 ha), storing about 1.7 billion gallons at an elevation of 1,600 feet (490 m) above sea level, 770 feet (230 m) higher than the lower reservoir. To move the huge volumes of water (8,800 cubic feet per second uphill and 10,760 cf/s downhill) in both directions, Bear Swamp uses reversible water turbines of the Francis type.
Construction started in 1968 and was completed in 1974. New England Power Company developed Bear Swamp with the intention of absorbing and storing some of the excess electrical power from the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station which was located nearby (almost adjacent) on the Deerfield River, and was then in operation at the time Bear Swamp was constructed. Yankee Rowe was later decommissioned in 1991, however Bear Swamp continues operate by absorbing electrical power from the grid and later returning electrical power to the grid. Although the efficiency of that is very low, the power is stored when demand is off peak, when supply is in excess and demand is low resulting in that power being low priced. Because of the low efficiency, only a small fraction of that power is later returned to the grid, but at a much higher price during peak load periods when New England's electricity consumers place the heaviest demand on the system.
The station can produce about 600 megawatts (800,000 hp) of power for up to 6 hours during the day. The station can respond from zero to full capacity in under 20 minutes.
An underground visitor' center provides an automated slide show and other information about the history of the project and its site. More than 60,000 guests visit this location each year. [1]
Energy storage is the capture of energy produced at one time for use at a later time to reduce imbalances between energy demand and energy production. A device that stores energy is generally called an accumulator or battery. Energy comes in multiple forms including radiation, chemical, gravitational potential, electrical potential, electricity, elevated temperature, latent heat and kinetic. Energy storage involves converting energy from forms that are difficult to store to more conveniently or economically storable forms.
A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid.
The Ludington Pumped Storage Plant is a hydroelectric plant and reservoir in Ludington, Michigan. It was built between 1969 and 1973 at a cost of $315 million and is owned jointly by Consumers Energy and DTE Energy and operated by Consumers Energy. At the time of its construction, it was the largest pumped storage hydroelectric facility in the world.
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), or pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), is a type of hydroelectric energy storage used by electric power systems for load balancing. The method stores energy in the form of gravitational potential energy of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost surplus off-peak electric power is typically used to run the pumps. During periods of high electrical demand, the stored water is released through turbines to produce electric power. Although the losses of the pumping process make the plant a net consumer of energy overall, the system increases revenue by selling more electricity during periods of peak demand, when electricity prices are highest. If the upper lake collects significant rainfall or is fed by a river then the plant may be a net energy producer in the manner of a traditional hydroelectric plant.
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The Dinorwig Power Station, known locally as Electric Mountain, or Mynydd Gwefru, is a pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme, near Dinorwig, Llanberis in Snowdonia national park in Gwynedd, north Wales. The scheme can supply a maximum power of 1,728 MW (2,317,000 hp) and has a storage capacity of around 9.1 GWh (33 TJ).
Deerfield River is a river that runs for 76 miles (122 km) from southern Vermont through northwestern Massachusetts to the Connecticut River. The Deerfield River was historically influential in the settlement of western Franklin County, Massachusetts, and its namesake town. It is the Connecticut River's second-longest tributary in Massachusetts, 2.1 miles (3.4 km) shorter than Metropolitan Springfield's Westfield River.
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Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station was a nuclear power plant in Rowe, Massachusetts, located on the Deerfield River in the town of Rowe in western Massachusetts. Its 180 MWe pressurized water reactor operated from 1961 to 1991. It produced electricity for New England consumers. The site is referred to as "Yankee-Rowe" or simply "Rowe", to avoid confusion with Vermont Yankee, another nuclear power station located in nearby Vernon, Vermont. The decommissioning of the site was completed in 2007.
Muddy Run Pumped Storage Facility was built by the Philadelphia Electric Company and is a pumped-storage hydroelectric generation facility in Drumore Township, Pennsylvania, United States. When completed in 1968, Muddy Run was the largest pumped-storage facility in the world. Muddy Run has a capacity of 1,071 megawatts. The facility is operated by the Susquehanna Electric Company, a subsidiary of Constellation Energy. Ernest Spey was the superintendent of Conowingo Hydroelectric Dam and the new Muddy Run facility until 1989.
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Load balancing, load matching, or daily peak demand reserve refers to the use of various techniques by electrical power stations to store excess electrical power during low demand periods for release as demand rises. The aim is for the power supply system to have a load factor of 1.
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The Helms Pumped Storage Plant is located 50 mi (80 km) east of Fresno, California in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range's Sierra National Forest. It is a power station that uses Helms Creek canyon on the North Fork of the Kings River for off-river water storage and the pumped-storage hydroelectric method to generate electricity. After being planned in the early 1970s, construction on the plant began in June 1977 and commercial operations began on 30 June 1984. It has an installed capacity of 1,212 MW and is owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
The Terror Lake Hydroelectric Generating Station is the principal power plant for Kodiak Island, Alaska. The Hydroelectricity station consists of three Pelton runner vertical shaft turbine units rated 11 megawatts each at 1200 feet head. Two units were installed when the station was constructed in 1985, and the third unit rated 11.5 MW was installed in the fall of 2013. The station is owned and operated by the Kodiak Electric Association, Inc., an electrical cooperative owned by its customers. The station is located about 25 miles from the city of Kodiak and is accessible only by air or boat.
Northfield Mountain is a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant and reservoir located on and under the similarly named Northfield Mountain in Erving and Northfield, Massachusetts. It is currently owned by FirstLight Power Resources, which purchased the facility from Northeast Utilities in 2006.
Home energy storage devices store electricity locally, for later consumption. Electrochemical energy storage products, also known as "Battery Energy Storage System", at their heart are rechargeable batteries, typically based on lithium-ion or lead-acid controlled by computer with intelligent software to handle charging and discharging cycles. Companies are also developing smaller flow battery technology for home use. As a local energy storage technologies for home use, they are smaller relatives of battery-based grid energy storage and support the concept of distributed generation. When paired with on-site generation, they can virtually eliminate blackouts in an off-the-grid lifestyle.
