To counteract a potential reduction in grid stability caused by a rapidly growing share of intermittent renewable energy sources within our electrical grids, large scale deployment of energy storage will become indispensable. Pumped hydro storage is widely regarded as the most cost-effective option for this. However, its application is traditionally limited to certain topographic features. Expanding its operating range […]
What You Need to Know About the ALPHEUS Project
What components does the ALPHEUS project consist of? Like traditional hydropower, the ALPHEUS project consists of something to generate the water elevation difference (dam and penstocks), a pump / turbine, a motor / generator, and electrical equipment to interface between the motor / generator and the power grid. Based on market analysis, the requirement for […]
Applying Knowledge From Wind Power to Hydropower
Both wind power and hydropower systems contain a turbo machine interacting with a fluidum. Also, both applications are high torque and low speed in nature, and experience an extant axial force. As for capacity, the 10 MW design goal in the ALPHEUS project corresponds to the rated power of modern large wind turbines. Furthermore, a […]
New Publication: A Head Loss Pressure Boundary Condition for Hydraulic Systems
Despite the increase in computational power of HPC clusters, it is in most cases not possible to include the entire hydraulic system when doing detailed numerical studies of the flow in one of the components in the system. The numerical models are still most often constrained to a small part of the system and the […]
Design of the Pump / Turbine Model
What is great about the pump / turbine the ALPHEUS project is developing? The counter-rotating pump-turbine under development in ALPHEUS is of axial type, which is more suitable for low-head applications. It has no guide vanes, but instead there are two counter-rotating runners that interact to give the best possible conditions at all time. In […]
What Hazard Does the ALPHEUS Project Face?
The Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour is represented by the E2S chair HPC-Waves and is involved in the ALPHEUS effort trough WP5. The chair HPC-Waves (High Performance Computing of Waves) is part of the college of engineering at UPPA’s Anglet campus in SW France. The chair is lead by Volker Roeber, a […]
The ALPHEUS project has opened the participation in the stakeholder questionnaire for any prospect interested in the low-head pumped hydro storage technology
Have you ever thought about how else to store the electric energy produced by thousands of offshore wind energy parks globally? The best energy storages today are pumped-hydro storage systems; hence the question whether this technology can be adopted to lower heads, and the ALPHEUS EU-project is currently finding out. Better energy storage technology is […]
What is the Environmental Impact of the ALPHEUS Project?
Hydropower applications pose a series of environmental impacts on ecologically sensitive areas, and for this reason require careful site planning. The study of environmental aspects (siting and land use) is paramount in ALPHEUS and ALPHEUS-like projects. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) imposes the monitoring and the assessment of European marine waters quality against 11 […]
Why Does the Electricity Grid Need ALPHEUS?
The pan-European power grid is experiencing a rapid upheaval in the nature of its energy supply side. An ever-increasing penetration of Variable renewable energy (VRE), such as wind and solar energy, pose new challenges regarding the grid stability and security of supply. Without further measures, the fluctuating and non-dispatchable nature of these VRE would turn […]
Introduction to the ALPHEUS Project
European goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions require the increase of renewable energies used in the electric grid. Nowadays the most developed renewable energy technologies are wind, solar and hydraulic power stations. Wind and solar energy capacity has been rapidly increasing in the last years. However, the natural unpredictability of these energy sources calls for […]