Feasibility Study of Seawater Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Plant for Sri Lanka

Methods of peak shaving are required for the countries where the daily load curve is dominated by the domestic loads. Using energy storage devices is often the solution for levelling the daily load curve. Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Plants are widely used in most of the countries for the peak leveling purposes. This study proposes to construct a seawater pump hydro energy storage plant for the Sri Lankan power system. The study identifies Trincomalee as the one of suitable locations for the Seawater Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Plant. The data of the Sri Lankan Survey Department and Google Earth data of the locations have been used for the collection of details of the location. The volume of the upper reservoir was calculated within the study and found to be 868,750 m3. Detailed calculations were carried out to determine the net head for both generating and pumping modes and presented. The results of the calculations show that the suitable time duration of the plant in generation mode is 3.5 hours and the operation of the plant in pumping mode is 5.64 hours. This research study concludes that it is feasible to construct a 49 MW Seawater Pumped Hydro Energy Storage plant in Trincomalee.