A review of pumped hydro energy storage development in significant international electricity markets

The global effort to decarbonise electricity systems has led to widespread deployments of variable renewable energy generation technologies, which in turn has boosted research and development interest in bulk Electrical Energy Storage (EES). However despite large increases in research funding, many electricity markets with increasingly large proportions of variable renewable generation have seen little actual bulk EES deployment. While this can be partly attributed to the need for technological developments, it is also due to the challenge of fairly rewarding storage operators for the range of services that storage provides to the wider network, especially in markets that have undergone significant restructuring and liberalisation. Pumped Hydroelectric Energy Storage (PHES) is the overwhelmingly established bulk EES technology (with a global installed capacity around 130GW) and has been an integral part of many markets since the 1960s. This review provides an historical overview of the development of PHES in several significant electrical markets and compares a number of mechanisms that can reward PHES in different international market frameworks. As well as providing up-to-date information about PHES, a primary motivation for this work is to provide an overview about the types of rewards available to bulk EES for the wider storage community including investors, technology developers and policy-makers. Observing that bulk EES projects seem to be unattractive investments for the private sector, the paper also includes a brief discussion in terms of public sector investment.