With persistently increasing fuel prices and growing environmental concerns, the energy from renewable resources, particularly wind energy is becoming immensely popular throughout the world. Jordan is one of the countries that are interested in wind power, in 2015, the first large scale wind power plant- Tafila wind farm has started its electrical energy production with a capacity of 117 MW. In the near future Ma’an Wind Farm will be hooked up to the national grid with a capacity of 80 MW. Through the upcoming years other farms will be installed and connected to the national grid. The future plans for wind energy plants shall exceed 1200 MW.

The main drawback of wind power is its inherent variability and uncertainty of source making wind energy a difficult resource to dispatch. Therefore, a large-scale integration of wind may affect the stability of utility grids. The challenge is to find a way to make energy created by wind resources available on demand.

The design achieved for PHES project by UJ scholar Dr. Salih Akour and his graduate student Eng. Anas Al Grallah, is considered to be the first of its type in Jordan and the region.  The project utilizes the existing dams in Jordan to be part of the PHES system.

In this novel design, the existing dams serve as the lower pumped storage basin. The geographical location nearby each dam is surveyed to allocate almost natural basins with minimum amount of civil work to serve as upper storage basin. Ten sites (King Talal, Al-Wehdah, Wadi Al-Arab, Al-Tannur, Al-Mujib, Al-Walah Al-Karamah, Ziglab, Shuib, and Al-Kafrien dam) in the Jordan Valley are studied, six of them (King Talal, Al-Wehdah, Wadi Al-Arab, Al-Tannur, Al-Mujib, Al-Walah) fulfill the engineering design requirements to be suitable to serve as upper storage basin in terms of height difference and size. Using these dams as part of the PHES system does not affect their functionality. This new design is achieved based on real data obtained from both Jordan Valley Authority and NEPCO (National Electric Power Company). Towards accomplishing this design project many engineering tools and internationally well-known software design and optimization packages are utilized such as PLEXOS software package.

In the PHES system water is pumped from the lower basin (the dam) to the correspondent upper basin when there is surplus of power in the National Grid to be stored as potential energy. When there is deficit of power supply to the grid the stored potential energy will be recovered by returning the stored water in the upper basin back to the dam (lower basin) through the hydroelectric turbines.

This Pumped Hydroelectric Energy Storage (PHES) system is a solution for load balancing and energy storage. Also, it offers the ability to store energy that is produced from wind farms or any other renewable energy source when it is difficult to utilize the power within the low demand periods (off peaks), then release the energy at the time when it is needed, most often during peak electrical demand. Contrary to the conventional electric power generators, the PHES system can be online to cover the deficit in electric power supply within 120 seconds compared to few minutes or hours in the conventional power generating systems. Such system will not only solve the variability of wind energy plants but also any other renewable energy plant that might be integrated to the national electric grid.

The achieved design is environment friendly and cost-effective in the long term compared to the conventional electric batteries.

Dr. Salih Akour is an associate professor at the Mechanical engineering department of the School of Engineering.