Low-head pumped hydro storage: A review on civil structure designs, legal and environmental aspects to make its realization feasible in seawater

The energy transition requires large-scale storage to provide long-term supply and short-term grid stability. Though pumped hydro storage is widely used for this purpose, regions without natural topography do not have the potential for traditional high-head pumped hydro storage. To address this, multiple projects for low-head and seawater...

Risk mitigation and investability of a U-PHS project in the Netherlands

We review the status of a 1.4 GW, 8 GWh underground pumped hydro storage (U-PHS) project in the southern Netherlands, which has been under development since the 1980s. Its history shows how the prospect of a large-scale U-PHS for The Netherlands (a country whose proverbial flatness prohibits PHS) has been attractive in every decade, based on...