Category: News

The ALPHEUS’ project WP2 involves the design and manufacture of a pump/turbine runner that can work in low head conditions and with high round-trip efficiency. Within the project there are several partners from European universities, a company (Advanced Design Technology Ltd.) and a research organization (IHE Delft). The proposal of the project describes briefly all […]

The growing share of intermittent renewable energy sources are creating challenges for grid stability. Energy storage is now becoming an important topic of research to ensure future growth of renewable energy. Reversible pump/turbine technology (RPT) is one of the key areas of research. But many existing RPTs require high head reservoirs which limits application to […]

Last week, Jonathan Fahlbeck, PhD Student working on the project, had the honour to represent ALPHEUS project at the 30th IAHR Symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems. The presentation was on ‘Numerical analysis of an initial design of a counter-rotating pump-turbine‘. A paper of the work will be published later by the IOP Conference Series. The ALPHEUS project […]

The paper: The Contribution of Low‐head Pumped Hydro Storage to a successful Energy Transition (available here) presented at the virtual 19th Wind Integration Workshop (11 – 12 November 2020) was chosen among the best 10 papers of the whole RE Grid Integration Week 2020. The Wind Integration Workshop was designed for power system operators, transmission and […]

WP1 of ALPHEUS is project coordination. Since the start of the project in April, the tasks we have been engaged in are: • Communicating information among project work packages;• Solving the gap in the project due to the original partner BT Projects dropping out. Their responsibilities for the fish experiments are being replaced by ATKB […]

In WP3, the Power Take-Off (PTO) and machine-side control are studied and designed. In the past year, good progress has been made on both subjects. For the shaft-driven Contra-Rotating Reversible Pump-Turbine (CR RPT), many possible PTO configurations are possible. These configurations were compared based on their influence on RPT and electric machine performance, as well […]

D2.1 This report describes how the optimised initial down-scaled model design of the Shaft-Driven CounterRotating Pump-Turbine (SD-CRPT) in the ALPHEUS project was derived. A first design was made in prototype scale, according to the expected requirements of the final machines. The design was scaled to an appropriate model scale with respect to requirements from the […]

The pan-European power grid is experiencing an increasing penetration of Variable Renewable Energy (VRE). The fluctuating and non-dispatchable nature of VRE hinders them in providing the Ancillary Service (AS) needed for the reliability and stability of the grid. Today’s grid is reliant on synchronous generators. In case of sudden frequency deviations, the inertia of their […]

Mr. Mohammed Qudaih, M.Sc., Research Assistant with the Working Group Energy Systems at Technische Universität Braunschweig’s (TUB) elenia Institute for High Voltage Technology and Power Systems will present a new paper on The Contribution of Low-Head Pumped Hydro Storage to a Successful Energy Transition at the 19th Wind Integration Workshop. The Wind Integration Workshop is […]

ALPHEUS is a €5m project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. In this post we explain the aims of ALPHEUS and each of the engineering components. Renewable energy, especially wind and solar, is essential for our global efforts to decarbonize and slow the rate of global warming. However, the current electricity grid is unable […]