This is the Ludington Pumped Storage Power Facility. It is on the shores of Lake Michigan, about half way up the “Mitt” of Michigan, near where the base of the pinky finger would be.
It is one of a number of facilities around the world that form the foundation of an energy storage network, that will become increasingly important as the planet moves from 20th century to 21st century energy sources. It’s a simple concept. During times of low electric demand, power from base load plants, or, say, wind turbines churning on lake breezes at 3 o’clock on a sunday morning, is used to pump water up several hundred feet to an artificial lake at the top of the dunes. During times of high demand, (or low wind) – the floodgates open, the water rushes down, and turns turbines to produce energy, just like a hydro electric installation.
Think of it as a battery, the size of the Hoover Dam.
Now think of it undergoing an 800 million dollar expansion.
This is also a battery.
Smaller, but just as important for the future, this is a proprietary design by Xtreme Energy to augment renewable energy generation.
Duke Energy, the mega utility and power plant provider, has selected Xtreme to build a 36-megawatt dynamic power resource at its 153-megawatt wind farm in Notrees, Texas. The battery pack should go live in late 2012.
The Xtreme design is just one of a half dozen battery technologies jostling for position in a burgeoning industry.
And this is a battery.
The electrical grid itself is a storage battery.
A well integrated grid has always been essential, even for “conventional’ sources of power, which can also be intermittent, and can fail when they are most needed – like the Brown’s Ferry Nuclear plant which shut down last week in the wake of a tornado outbreak.
Utilities plan for events like these, and always keep enough “spinning reserve” online, or ready to go, in case of large outages that crop up suddenly, and to cover loads at peak demand times. Hydroelectric reservoirs, gas pipelines, gas storage facilities, and coal piles can also be thought of as “energy storage”.
The enhanced integration of a rebuilt “smart grid” will allow much greater integration of renewable power sources.
Mark Jacobsen, a civil engineer at Stanford University, has done some of the key analysis of grid integration for renewable energy, and points out that if enough wind turbines are interconnected over a wide enough area, there will always be a minimum power production, making grid-integrated wind, in fact, a “base-load” power source.
IN the case of the Michigan plant, early studies of Michigan’s Renewable Energy standard indicate that the new energy sources are coming in much cheaper than originally envisioned – a finding consistent with experiences around the country, and the planet.
The initial plan [for Consumer’s Energy company] to meet the 10 percent renewable power mandate in 2015 was estimated to cost $78 million, however the power company now says those costs are expected to be only $23 million.
Consumer’s Energy, one of Michigan’s large utilities, made predictions several years ago for wind energy costs of 17 cents per kw/hr. Actual experience with new wind arrays shows that real costs will be half that.
Which makes the Pumped storage facility a hot property, potentially giving Michigan an enormous advantage as wind power ramps up in the state, and inevitably moves offshore in the Great Lakes – a potential wind resource rivaling the Great Plains.
My videos on wind energy discuss these and other issues of intermittent power sources.
My family is from this area of Michigan near the pumped storage project so I have some mixed feelings. First of all, in order to create the reservoir Consumers power used “eminent domain” to take land away from people (mostly farmers) at rock bottom prices. During this process they bought up huge tracts of Lakeshore farmland which they claimed they had to have even thought it was miles from the project. In recent years they have been selling this Lake shore land to developers for vacation houses and other projects. They’ve made big profits on the land sales (using the eminent domain power as a tool).
Second, the reservoir sits above the ground level. So you basically have this unnatural looking man-made embankment that rises up on the horizon for miles around. The company claims that the water won’t leak out of the reservoir, but one would assume that over time the material used for the water seals would erode and water would naturally flow out of the reservoir and into surrounding land. Sure enough those that live near the project have had numerous problems with flooding in recent years.
Third, the effect on marine life is an unknown harmful side effect. The turbines suck lake water into the reservoir and tons of fish and marine life get chopped up in the process. As you drive by the project you’ll see flocks of gulls collecting the dead fish at the water intake station.
I guess my point is that much like nuclear power, many “green” energy alternative have their drawbacks.
agreed, there are trade offs.
I guess the eminent domain issue is kind of water over the dam, since construction was 30+ years ago.
On the other hand, Consumer’s had obtained the rights to similar land up between Frankfort and Arcadia, and donated all or much of it, irreplaceable dunes near the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. So that’s a plus.
You can look for comparison at the major coal power plants along the great lakes, which typically have huge piles of toxic coal ash leaking heavy metals and poisons into valuable wetland environments, and are in part responsible for the mercury load that has made consumption of Great Lakes fish inadvisable for children and women of child bearing age.
In light of the Fukushima situation, you can also let your imagination go as to what might happen to the lake if a similar event were to happen here.
My overriding concern is for the long term health of the Great Lakes, which are in danger of becoming a stinking toxic soup from the effects of climate change, invasive species, and agricultural runoff. If we want to maintain a society powered by electricity, we do have to make these decisions. I don’t think there will be more pumped storage plants on Lake Michigan, because the land is too valuable for other uses, and the state has vast potential for underground compressed air storage, which will be the wave of the future.
I should have said ‘donated the land to the Nature Conservancy”.