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CORDIS

INNOVATIVE STORAGE TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS IN HYDROPOWER

Project description

Better energy storage for a resilient future

As the share of non-dispatchable renewable energy grows, reliable storage solutions become crucial. Due to the variability of these sources, maintaining a stable energy supply becomes challenging and the risk of green energy curtailment is increased. With this in mind, the EU-funded STOR-HY project aims to push to a new frontier of pumped hydro energy storage concept while minimising costs and environmental impacts and increasing societal acceptance. It focuses on extending the lifespan and retrofitting of equipment through smart monitoring and control technologies. It also targets challenging locations, such as seawater and coal mines by developing technologies for harsh operating fluids. With advanced digital tools, the project improves operational efficiency, supporting a more resilient EU energy grid.

Objective

STOR-HY aims to minimize CAPEX, OPEX for innovative pumped storage projects. This is achieved by enhancing the lifetime and recyclability of components and equipment, and devising operation strategies for unconventional schemes through sensor-based condition monitoring systems. These systems detect early failure mechanisms, enabling the postponement of unnecessary maintenance actions and avoiding unplanned outages. Furthermore, strategic use of digital tools for operational management is employed to improve efficiency, reliability, and availability of Pumped Storage Plants.
Considering energy and market demand dynamics, variable renewable generation, and integration, STOR-HY addresses climate change effects and enhances flexibility and resilience of the EU energy grid. The project focuses on optimizing plant availability, offering increased storage potential, peak shaving, fast response regulation, and ancillary services for grid resilience. The integration of digital tools, real-time controllers, monitoring strategies, and predictive maintenance algorithms is consolidated in a Cyber-physical platform for Advanced Decision Support (CADS). This platform, along with high-tech computational models, enables the realistic estimation of critical component degradation in short- and long-term operations. This information supports informed decision-making in PSP operation and aids in the design of innovative control strategies for challenging conditions.
These developments result in a broader operating range and increased flexibility in EU hydropower generation and storage potential.
STOR-HY prioritizes building regional connections with local stakeholders, industry, academia, and policy institutions. Sustainability considerations encompass environmental, circularity, economic, and social aspects, drawing insights from previous projects. These insights include on-site impacts, societal acceptance, ecological concerns, and LCC.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA
Net EU contribution
€ 1 215 250,00
Address
CALLE JORDI GIRONA 31
08034 Barcelona
Spain

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Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost
€ 1 215 250,00

Participants (17)

Partners (3)

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