The facility, also known as a pumped storage power plant, is a form of hydroelectric energy storage. This one will both generate and store energy for power grids throughout Switzerland. Integral to its design are two large pools of water, which sit at different heights. Pumping water from the lower pool up into the higher pool “charges” the facility’s battery. Reversing the water’s passage rotates a turbine that generates hydroelectric power when energy is in short supply.
Switzerland has been working on the water battery since at least 2008, when it was decided that the facility would be built between two reservoirs at the Canton of Valais. To bring materials to the battery’s site, however, engineers had to dig tunnels totaling 18 kilometers through the Swiss Alps. The team also had the height of the Vieux Emosson dam increased by 20 meters between 2012 and 2016, allowing the reservoirs to store more water and, as a result, generate even more energy.
A pumped water storage plant (AKA “water battery”) in Kyiv. (Photo: uhe.gov.ua/Wikimedia Commons)
Fourteen years and €2 billion later, Switzerland’s massive water battery is finally operational. The completed facility has a storage capacity of 20 million kilowatt hours. Its six turbines can generate up to 900 MW of power. This means that at its peak, the water battery can power up to 900,000 homes at once—all from 600 meters underground.
The concept of using a pumped storage power plant to both generate and store energy isn’t new, even to Switzerland. A similar facility also exists in the Alps, near the tiny town of Linthal. This facility has four GE-made turbines that, when running simultaneously, can power up to one million homes. But as desperation for renewable energy grows, Switzerland and its neighbors need all the help they can get. Switzerland’s newest addition to the power grid will help safeguard the country (as well as other parts of Europe) against power shortages and help to supplement wind power, another one of Switzerland’s domestic sources of renewable energy.
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