| Yards Creek Generating Station | |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Location | Blairstown, New Jersey |
| Coordinates | 41°0′2.96″N75°1′53.60″W / 41.0008222°N 75.0315556°W |
| Status | Operational |
| Owner(s) | REV Renewables |
| Upper reservoir | |
| Creates | Upper Yards Creek Reservoir |
| Total capacity | 5,013 acre⋅ft (6,183,000 m3) |
| Lower reservoir | |
| Creates | Lower Yards Creek Reservoir |
| Total capacity | 5,452 acre⋅ft (6,725,000 m3) |
| Power Station | |
| Pump-generators | 3 x 140 MW reversible Francis-type |
| Installed capacity | 420 MW |
| Annual generation | 753.7 GWh |
Yards Creek Generating Station is a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant in Blairstown and Hardwick Township in Warren County, New Jersey, United States. The facility is owned by REV Renewables, which purchased it from Public Service Enterprise Group and FirstEnergy in 2020 and 2021. [1] It has an installed capacity of 420 MW.
The facility is located in the Delaware Water Gap region of the New Jersey Skylands. When built, the complex stretched into the former Pahaquarry Township. Pahaquarry got its name from the word Pahaquarra, which was a derivation of the Native American word Pahaqualong, which meant "the place between the mountains beside the waters". The township dissolved in 1997, becoming part of Hardwick Township [2]
Commercial operation began in 1965 and the power station was upgraded in the 1990s. Yards Creek consists of two reservoirs created by earth-fill embankment dams. The upper and lower reservoirs are separated by an elevation of 700 ft (210 m). [3] Water is conveyed between the plant and the Upper Reservoir via an 18-foot (5.5 m) diameter, 1,800-foot (550 m) long exposed steel pipe. At full station load, approximately 4 million gpm of water is released (9000 cfs) 5,800 MGD, Velocity: 35 ft/sec, or 24 miles per hour (39 km/h). The full upper reservoir will last 5.7 hours at Hydraulic Turbine nameplate capacity. The storage facility provides energy regulation and spinning reserve during on-peak hours, and it provides an energy sink off-peak (from 11 P.M. to 7 A.M.) to allow fossil and nuclear plants to remain more fully loaded. [4] [5]
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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