Like all pumped-storage hydroelectric schemes, it makes use of two water reservoirs connected by a pressure tunnel: in this case an artificial reservoir near the summit of the mountain and the naturally occurring corrie lake, Lough Nahanagan, at the foot of the mountain.[2] Water is pumped up from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir, using surplus power available at times of low demand, and then allowed to fall by gravity from the upper reservoir back into the lower reservoir, passing through turbines along the way to generate electricity.[3] The generating plant resides inside the mountain in a cavern measuring 250×70×90 feet (76×21×27 metres),[2] which houses four reversible pump turbines with a combined capacity of 292 megawatts.[4] The upper reservoir is 19.4 metres (64 feet) deep, has a capacity of 2.3million cubic metres (81million cubic feet) and covers an area of 160,000 square metres (40 acres).[4][5] The power station is designed to generate electricity at times of peak demand and is instantly dispatchable: it can go from standstill to full generation within 70 seconds, compared with 12 hours for some thermal plants.[6] It can generate electricity at full load for up to six hours per day and has a round trip energy efficiency of 75%. Since 2004, Turlough Hill has been the Hydro Control Centre (HCC) for the entire ESB hydroelectric portfolio, which comprises 19 generators in total.[1] An overhaul of the plant was planned for 2011 following the failure of Unit 1's stator bars.[7] A subsequent investigation led to serious defects being discovered, which led to the refurbishment of all four generating units.[8]
History
Turlough Hill was first conceived by Dermot O'Riordan, Deputy Chief Engineer in the ESB's Civil Engineering Department.[9] In 1964, ESB engineers visited several locations in the Wicklow Mountains, digging trial pits and boreholes, looking for suitable sites for a pumped-storage station.[10] A shortlist of three proposals was drawn up by O'Riordan: an artificial upper reservoir at the summit of Tonduff mountain with an artificial lower reservoir in the Glencree valley; an upper reservoir using Lough Ouler, a natural corrie lake near the summit of Tonelagee mountain, with an artificial lower reservoir in the Glenmacnass valley; and an artificial upper reservoir at Turlough Hill with Lough Nahanagan as lower reservoir.[11]
The Turlough Hill site was chosen as the best of these options and work commenced on the scheme in 1968. The cost was estimated at IEP £12 million.[12] A loan of £6 million was secured from the World Bank to partially finance the project.[13] Contracts worth £2 million were signed with Karlstad Mekaniska Werkstad for four reversible pump turbines and with Siemens for four 73 megawatt generators in 1969.[14] The contracts for the civil engineering works were awarded to two Germanconsortia: Beuscher-Teerbau for the upper reservoir and Alfred Kunz & Co. for the underground works in the lower reservoir.[15]
Concerns about the impact of the scheme on the scenery at the Wicklow Gap led to ESB, whose chairman and chief executive at the time, Tom Murray, was an enthusiastic supporter of the project, engaging the services of landscape architectSylvia Crowe.[12] She recommended that the upper reservoir be camouflaged by planting vegetation on its embankments and that the works on the lower reservoir at Lough Nahanagan be designed to fit into the background of rock.[12] The siting of the transmission lines that would connect Turlough Hill to the electrical grid was a matter of some controversy. Objections to the lines, planned to run from Turlough Hill to the village of Hollywood, came from several quarters, including Bord Fáilte, the Irish tourist board.[16] In the end, it was decided that they would run underground from Turlough Hill for c. 1 mile (1.6 kilometres), to preserve the view at the Wicklow Gap, before emerging overground on pylons along the King's River to Hollywood.[5] This added £600,000 to the cost of the project.[17]
At their peak, the construction works employed over 500 personnel: many of the workers lived in a temporary camp adjacent to the site, which provided food and lodgings.[18] During the initial exploratory works, a geological fault was discovered inside the mountain and the location of the cavern housing the generating plant had to be altered.[19]1,400 pounds (640 kilograms) of gelignite were stolen from the site in an armed raid in 1972.[20]Archaeological investigations near the Wicklow Gap during construction uncovered part of Saint Kevin's Road, the ancient path that brought pilgrims from Hollywood to the monastery at Glendalough.[21] The first generator went on line in December 1973 and remaining three soon followed.[21] The scheme became fully operational in 1974.[1] At the time of completion, it was the largest civil engineering project ever carried out in Ireland.[4] The final cost of the project was IEP £22 million.[21]
Following the completion of Turlough Hill, the ESB considered a number of sites – in the Wicklow and Comeragh mountains as well as around Lough Derg – for further pumped-storage schemes.[22] However, Turlough Hill remains the only such scheme in Ireland to date, although the Commission for Energy Regulation has approved the construction of a 70MW facility at Knocknagreenan, County Cork.[23]
Name
The hill originally did not have a name on the Ordnance Survey map. The engineer who identified the site, J O'Riordan, decided to name the hill after his son Turlough.[24] The name is quite fitting in any case as the pumped storage station draws water from the mountain top lake, which thus becomes a ‘dry lake’. There is a geological feature known as a Turlough; it is defined as "(in Ireland) a low-lying area on limestone which becomes flooded in wet weather through the welling up of groundwater from the rock. ORIGIN late 17th cent.: from Irish turloch, from tur ‘dry’ + loch ‘lake’."[25]
↑ quoted directly from Apple Computer’s Oxford Dictionary of English 3rd edition, 2010. See also Whittow, John (1984) The Penguin Dictionary of Physical Geography, p.556.
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.
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).
The Shannon hydroelectric Scheme was a major development by the Irish Free State in the 1920s to harness the power of the River Shannon. Its product, the Ardnacrusha power plant, is a hydroelectric power station which is still producing power today and is located near Ardnacrusha within County Clare approximately 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) from the Limerick border. It is Ireland's largest river hydroelectric scheme and is operated on a purpose built headrace connected to the River Shannon. The plant includes fish ladders so that returning fish, such as salmon, can climb the river safely past the power station.
Turlough Hill, also known as Tomaneena, is a 681-metre-high (2,234 ft) mountain in County Wicklow in Ireland and site of Ireland's only pumped-storage hydroelectricity plant. The power station is owned and operated by the ESB and can generate up to 292 megawatts (392,000 hp) of electricity at times of peak demand.
The Wicklow Mountains form the largest continuous upland area in Ireland. They occupy the whole centre of County Wicklow and stretch outside its borders into the counties of Dublin, Wexford and Carlow. Where the mountains extend into County Dublin, they are known locally as the Dublin Mountains. The highest peak is Lugnaquilla at 925 metres.
The Electricity Supply Board is a state owned electricity company operating in the Republic of Ireland. While historically a monopoly, the ESB now operates as a commercial semi-state concern in a "liberalised" and competitive market. It is a statutory corporation whose members are appointed by the government of Ireland.
Kruonis Pumped Storage Plant is located near Kruonis, Lithuania, 34 km (21 mi) east of Kaunas. Its main purpose is to provide grid energy storage. It operates in conjunction with the Kaunas Hydroelectric Power Plant. During periods of low demand, usually at night, Kruonis PSHP raises water from the lower Kaunas reservoir to the upper one using cheap surplus energy. The station is designed to have an installed capacity of 1,600 MW but only four 225 MW generators are currently operational. With a fully filled upper reservoir the plant can generate 900 MW for about 12 hours.
The Tumut Hydroelectric Power Stations is a series of three hydroelectric power stations on the Tumut River in New South Wales, Australia, that are part of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
The R756 road is a regional road in Ireland running west–east from Dunlavin to Laragh. Its entire 32 km (20 mi) length is within County Wicklow crossing east–west through the Wicklow Gap.
Camaderry at 699 metres (2,293 ft), is the 90th-highest peak in Ireland on the Arderin scale, and the 112th-highest peak on the Vandeleur-Lynam scale. Camaderry is situated in the southern sector of the Wicklow Mountains range, and forms a broad horseshoe around the valley of Glendalough with the hydroelectric station at Turlough Hill 681 metres (2,234 ft), and the mountains of Conavalla 734 metres (2,408 ft), and Lugduff 652 metres (2,139 ft). Camaderry has a subsidiary summit, Camaderry South East Top 677 metres (2,221 ft), and both lie across the deep Wicklow Gap from Tonelagee 817 metres (2,680 ft), which sits on the "central spine" of the Wicklow range.
The Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme is a pumped-storage power station in the escarpment of the Little Drakensberg range straddling the border of the KwaZulu-Natal and Free State provinces, South Africa. It is about 22 km (14 mi) North-East of Van Reenen.
The electricity sectors of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are integrated and supply 2.5 million customers from a combination of coal, peat, natural gas, wind and hydropower. In 2022, 34 TWh were generated. In 2018 natural gas produced 51.8%, while wind turbines generated 28.1%, coal 7%, and peat 6.8% of Ireland's average electricity demand. In 2020 wind turbines generated 36.3% of Ireland's electrical demand, one of the highest wind power proportions in the world. While the United Kingdom was one of the first countries in the world to deploy commercial nuclear power plants, the island of Ireland has never had a nuclear power plant built on either side of the Irish border. Nuclear power in Ireland was discussed in the 1960s and 1970s but ultimately never phased in, with legislation now in place explicitly forbidding its introduction.
Spirit of Ireland is a proposal to build pumped-storage hydroelectricity reservoirs in valleys in Ireland's west coast combined with large-scale on-shore and off-shore windfarms to reduce Ireland's dependence on imported energy and fossil fuels. It would initially involve identifying up to five coastal valleys from counties Donegal to Cork, building dams on their seaward side and flooding them with sea water. These would provide a hydro-power back-up for the wind farms. The proposal has been likened to the construction of the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric power scheme, which was Ireland's first large post-independence infrastructure project and required investment equivalent to 25% of the national budget at the time but met the majority of the state's electricity needs for 50 years.
The Siah Bisheh Pumped Storage Power Plant, also spelled Siyāhbisheh and Siah Bishe, is located in the Alborz Mountain range near the village of Siah Bisheh and 48 km (30 mi) south of Chalus in Mazandaran Province, Iran. The power plant uses the pumped-storage hydroelectric method to generate electricity during periods of high energy demand, making it a peaking power plant, intended to fulfill peak electricity demand in Tehran 60 km (37 mi) to the south. When complete it will have an installed generating capacity of 1,040 megawatts (1,390,000 hp) and a pumping capacity of 940 megawatts (1,260,000 hp). Planning for the project began in the 1970s and construction began in 1985. It was delayed from 1992 until 2001 and the first generator went online in May 2013. The remaining generators were commissioned by 1 September 2015. The power plant is the first pumped-storage type in Iran and will also use the country's first concrete-face rock-fill dam – two of them.
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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 Steenbras Power Station, also Steenbras Hydro Pump Station, is a 180 MW pumped-storage hydroelectric power station commissioned in 1979 in South Africa. The power station sits between the Steenbras Upper Dam and a small lower reservoir on the mountainside below. It acts as an energy storage system, by storing water in the upper reservoir during off-peak hours and releasing that water to generate electricity during peak hours. The City of Cape Town uses the power station for load balancing and to mitigate against loadshedding caused by the South African energy crisis. This power station is reported to be the first pumped-storage hydroelectric power station to be built on the African continent.
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