Europe |
Waking up a sleeping giant
Following the launch of the 2024 World Hydropower Outlook in June, the International Hydropower Association brought together experts from across Europe to provide insights and recommendations to enable more efficient and expedited hydropower development in the region. IWP&DC reports
Above: The Cortes La Muela Pumped Storage Hydropower Plant in Spain. Pumped storage’s role is elevating across Europe
PROVIDING 16% OF EUROPEAN electricity, hydropower is a key component of power supplies across the continent. Although 0.6GW was added in 2023, IHA’s Senior Policy Manager, Matteo Bianciotto, says the pace of development remains short of what is needed to fully decarbonise the power system. With several new pumped storage and reservoir projects being announced, Bianciotto does admit that these are positive signals for the next two decades. As Brendan Quigley, COO of Gruner Stucky, added, lessons need to be learnt from recent experience and put in place to improve future projects to develop them faster and make them better.
Portuguese insight Albino Marques is REN’s Institutional Relations Director
in Portugal who says that over the past 20 years the Portuguese electricity system has “totally changed”, and gone “through a revolution”. After introducing a lot of wind power into its electricity system, but having had coal and gas, Marques says it’s “been a challenge to see how the system evolved”. Acknowledging that hydro has played “a very important role” in the country’s electricity system, he
18 | October 2024 |
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explained that back in the 1950s it was practically only hydro-based. Pumped storage has since stepped up to play a key part, especially as there have been a few recent incidences where the system operator had to curtail wind and solar power. In spring 2024, the number of such curtailments increased considerably in comparison with previous years. “Without pumped storage,” Marques adds, “this would not have been possible…In my view we need more storage and more hydro pumped storage. Hydro is key for flexibility and pumped storage is able to balance the system.” Going on to discuss whether the interconnections between European power systems will be enough to accommodate the boom in solar and wind power, Marques explained that the balancing capability correlation is between the amount of hydro in each country’s control area, and the ability to balance the system quickly. “The countries that can recover and rebalance in less than 15 minutes are those where hydro have an important share, such as Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Spain and Portugal. These are best ones in Europe to recover the balance,” he said.
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