Yesterday Iberdrola began the first tests for the improvement and optimization of the pumped storage plant called Santiago Sil-Xaresin the municipality of Vilamartín de Valdeorras (Orense), where it plans to start up at the end of the year, “at full capacity”, of a gigabyte of excess energy storage.
As the company reported in a statement yesterday, these types of installations, known as gigabatteries, “are essential to advancing decarbonization and constitute the large-scale storage system.” more efficient which currently exists.
The first tests have already started and it is estimated that they will reach full capacity by the end of the year, with the hybridization of the five megawatt hour battery. Thus, Iberdrola installed a static starter which, combined with a five megawatt hour battery, will allow the current hydroelectric pumping between the two riverswhich have a slope of 230 meters, 50 megawatts of power and a storage capacity of almost three gigawatts per hour, they said.
Pumping makes it possible to accumulate surplus energy from non-manageable renewable sources, solar and wind, to have it available when it is most needed. In this way, “it provides stability of the electrical systembecause it makes it possible to generate significant quantities of clean energy with a very fast response time,” the company said in the press release.
Installation with more than 50 years
This hydroelectric power station located on the Sil River, with an average production of 100 GWh/year, came into service more than fifty years ago. He has four hydroelectric groups: two of them of the fluid type, called Santiago-Sil, with a power of 14 MW and a flow rate of 160 m3/s, and two others of the reversible Francis type, Santiago-Xares, with a capacity of pumped storage with 50 MW of power and a flow rate of 18 m3/s. In total, they supply more than a million homes, according to Iberdrola.
The pumping stations have two tanks at different heights which allow transport water from one to another in times of lower demand to benefit again when electricity consumption increases.
