Pumped hydro solar container construction costs

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has released an open-source pumped storage hydropower cost model tool that estimates how much new PSH projects might cost based on specific site specifications like geography, terrain, construction materials, and more. This report, originally published in September 2023, has been revised in March 2024 to improve and correct calculations of technical specifications and costs for water conductor components so that the model is more closely aligned with the 1990 EPRI Pumped-Storage Planning and Evaluation Guide. Our base case model of pumped hydro costs and economics therefore requires a ‘storage spread’ of around 25c/kWh. PSH can support large penetration of VRE, such as wind and solar, into the power system by compensating for their variability and provides a range of grid services such as mechanical inertia, frequency regulation and voltage control, operating.