Department of Defense (DoD)installations often have challenges meeting the required 14-day backup supplies of water and power. Current facility back-up energy supplies may be susceptible to supply chain challenges with unplanned events. There are few technical solutions that can provide both water and energy services onsite, and even fewer that are at an implementable technical readiness to be immediately piloted. Longer duration storage solutions can offer a cost-effective solution for facilities to ensure energy resilience from anticipated and unanticipated energy disruptions. 

This project will provide a technology synthesis, geographic and topographic assessments, and techno-economic analysis to identify feasibility, sensitivity, optimal configurations, and benefits of integrating pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES) on military facilities. PHES is a long-duration energy storage (LDES) solution that can provide grid balance and stability, cost savings, energy independence, and critical energy resilience. The project will allow DoD to understand the viability of PHES to manage electricity supplies and mitigate risk associated with energy security and supply chain disruptions that could potentially affect mission and grid readiness, reliability, operability, and resiliency.

This project will provide a better understanding of the resource potential (costs, equipment, etc.), technology landscape, technoeconomic feasibility, and general suitability of using various PHES technologies as an efficient LDES solution for military installations. The project will leverage an existing web-based interactive mapping and geospatial analysis tool which assesses PHES by characterizing the quantity, quality, and cost of PHES resources using a detailed description of generation capacities, storage durations, reservoir characteristics, hydraulic head, and conveyance distances, including technical and environmental exclusions. Optimization modeling will also be applied for on-site energy to estimate cost-optimal system sizing and dispatch, expected costs, and resilience benefits of PHES as an LDES solution. Input and output information will be estimated and verified through a project technical advisory team composed of Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, Ocean Pacific Technologies, Danfoss, and Herzog Energy experts where scenario analyses will apply PHES technologies at up to two DoD facilities.

Through the evaluation of smaller-scale pumps and turbines, as well as prefabricated or quickly constructed reservoirs, the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of PHES infrastructure and energy generation system configurations can be assessed, leading to more versatile, and efficient energy and water management operations. (Anticipated Project Completion - 2028)