Conglomerate GE will provide six 37MW turbines for a pumped hydro energy storage plant in the Spanish overseas territory of Gran Canaria.
The company is partnering with engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm Cobra Infrastructuras Hidrulicas to deploy the generating units for the Chira Soria Pumped Storage Power Plant plant.
Chira Soria will have a nameplate power rating of 200MW and an energy storage capacity of 3,500MWh, indicating a discharge duration of 17.5 hours at full output. The facility will help balance the grid on Gran Canaria, which lies off the coast of Morocco, and is expected to come online in 2027.
Pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) technology works by pumping water from a lower reservoir into an upper one during times of surplus energy on the grid, and releasing it back down through the turbines to generate power when it is needed later. Chira Soria will use desalinated seawater.
PHES is the vast majority of deployed energy storage capacity today, but new projects can take up to a decade or more from inception to commissioning so are relatively few and far between. In some places, like the UK, some projects are essentially ready-to-build but need reforms to electricity markets in order to go ahead, according to their developers. Specifically, reforms which increase the market value of long-duration energy storage (LDES).
