In Brief

  • Challenge: 2050 Challenge
  • Challenge type: National Challenge Fund
  • Status: Active

The Challenge

Our electricity supplies are becoming more dependent on renewable energy sources, which is a positive move, but some of these sources do not deliver power on a constant basis. To make sure that the national grid does not run short of power, additional services are needed to balance supply and demand.

Grid operators have a number of options available to balance the power grid, including: reducing generation, back-up technologies (e.g. gas turbines), managing demand, interconnections, and energy storage technologies.

The main technology currently available to conveniently store large quantities of energy is Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS). This works by having a power station operating cyclically to pump water to an upper reservoir when excess electricity is available and then releasing the same volume of water back into the lower reservoir thanks to its hydraulic pumps operating as turbines (changing the potential energy in the upper reservoir to kinetic energy and thus generating electricity).

However, conventional large scale PHS is expensive and comes with significant impacts on the environment and a requirement for a unique topography, limiting its viability. Our team is responding to the need for alternative PHS technology that can overcome these high costs and environmental impacts to provide a sustainable means of balancing the power grid.

The Solution

The SubScrewHydro hydro project provides a solution to this challenge by developing new micro-scale, fish friendly, and sea-water resistant turbines.

Micro-scale hydropower removes some of the environmental challenges associated with PHS at a larger scale.

SubScrewHydro adopts a particular low-cost technology called pump-as-turbines whereby commercial pumps are reversed to operate as turbines saving significant costs. Here we will convert fish pumps designed for the pumping of fish in the fisheries sectors without injuring them to turbines creating an environmentally friendly hydropower device.

Finally, these pump-as-turbines will be sea-water resistant enabling the use of seawater for energy storage and increasing the number of potential locations with the required topography to produce PHS.

The Team

  • Team Lead: Professor Aonghus McNabola, Dept of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, Trinity College Dublin.
  • Team Co-Lead: Prof Mary Kelly Quinn, University College Dublin

Societal Impact champion:

  • Dr Miguel Crespo Chacon, Easy Hydro Ltd.
  • Ken Whelan, Atlantic Salmon Trust