In WP3, the Power Take-Off (PTO) and machine-side control are studied and designed. One part of this work package deals with rotor fatigue. One of the overarching aims of the ALPHEUS project is to show the viability of using low head pumped hydro to improve the stability of the grid. One of the means to […]
Category: News
ALPHEUS will present two papers at the IAHR 31st Sympsosium
We have the pleasure to present two papers from the ALPHEUS Project (Chalmers University of Technology) at the AHR 31st Symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems. The 31st symposium provides unique opportunity to the academic and industrial research teams to exchange the stat-of-the-art knowledge and ideas that will help to develop the next-generation of hydropower […]
Challenges Combining Mechanical and Eletrical Components
To shift the operating range of PSH into the low-head region, ALPHEUS proposes a novel system comprised of several newly developed components. Each of these components is aiming to push the technology into the next development stage, improving its capability to provide bulk energy storage and ancillary services while being economically viable. The development is […]
New Publication: Low-Head Pumped Hydro Storage – A Review on Civil Structure Designs, Legal and Environmental Aspects to Make its Realization Feasible in Seawater
The energy transition requires large-scale storage to provide long-term supply and short-term grid stability. Though pumped hydro storage is widely used for this purpose, regions without natural topography do not have the potential for traditional high-head pumped hydro storage. To address this, multiple projects for low-head and seawater pumped hydro storage have been proposed, though few have […]
CFD Validation Tests for the Reversible Pump Turbine
Today’s Reversible Pump Turbines (RPT) are not efficient for low-head applications like the ones present in the low-head Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS) stations. Furthermore, the pump-turbines installed in low-head PHS stations will have to deal with significantly variable head differences. That is why the ALPHEUS project is researching on the design of RPTs efficient for […]
Challenges to Face in Building the ALPHEUS Pump / Turbine Model
One of the biggest challenges during the mechanical design of the pump / turbine was to combine the wishes and goals of the consortium with the manufacturing and mechanical limitations. At the largest operating points of the design, very large torques are generated compared to the size of the design. The transmission of the torque […]
New Publication Available: Low-Head Pumped Hydro Storage – A Review of Applicable Technologies for Design, Grid Integration, Control and Modelling
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 […]