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As a vast country, the most important thing that China lacks is mountains, rivers and seas. It is thanks to these abundant natural resources that the mainland's hydropower industry has flourished.
However, as more and more hydropower stations were built, it became clear that new hydropower plants were becoming more and more concentrated in the mountains.
It is important to know that the hydropower station built on the high mountain cannot rely on its own power generation because there is no terrain difference. Instead, it needs to consume up to 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity to pump up the water below the mountain before it can generate electricity.
However, even with such a lot of effort, the final power generation was only 80 kWh, and the loss was 20 kWh.
In this case, why does the mainland still spend tens of billions of yuan to build hydropower stations on the mountains and do this "loss-making deal"?
The Fengning Hydropower Station is located high in the mountains
What makes people so incomprehensible is the hydropower station built in Fengning, Hebei Province. The hydropower plant is located on a 1,200-metre high mountain.
The pumped storage power station was originally built to solve the problem of insufficient power supply in Beijing, Tianjin and northern Hebei together with neighboring hydropower stations.
With a cumulative investment of 18.7 billion yuan, the Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station has created many world firsts after eight years of completion.
This pumped storage hydropower station is worthy of the name of the world's largest in terms of installed capacity, energy storage capacity, underground plant scale and underground cavern group scale.
Although the Fengning Hydropower Station has created so many "world firsts", instead of being happy, people cannot understand why the country has invested so much money to build the hydropower station on a high mountain.
This is because, generally speaking, hydropower stations use the potential energy or kinetic energy of water to generate electricity. This means that in order to successfully complete the entire process of hydropower generation, the hydropower station must be built in a place with a large difference in terrain.
The location of Fengning Hydropower Station obviously does not meet this condition. The Fengning Hydropower Station, which is built on a mountain at an altitude of 1,200 meters, is unable to generate electricity on its own because of the lack of terrain.
In order to generate electricity, the hydropower plant must first use electricity to drive pumps, pump water from the bottom of the mountain to the mountain, and then generate hydroelectric power.
However, pumping water from the bottom of the mountain with a pump alone consumes 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Not to mention that after pumping water, the power station can only use this water to produce 80 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is a "loss-making deal" no matter how you look at it.
However, water conservancy experts have a different view of the Fengning Hydropower Station, believing that the construction of this hydropower station is a sure way to make money.
Why is it that it is obviously a loss-making transaction, but experts still think that it is profitable?
The best way to store energy is pumped hydro
Since mankind entered the electric age, electricity has become an indispensable resource for human survival, and a large amount of electricity is consumed every year.
Taking the mainland as an example, in 2023, the mainland will consume a total of 9,924.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, and this data is still growing at a rate of about 6% per year.
In the face of such a huge amount of electricity consumption, hydropower is naturally welcomed by the public as a green, sustainable and safe way of generating electricity.
Although after the construction of hydropower stations one after another, the electricity problem has been greatly improved. Over time, however, new problems were discovered.
From generating electricity from power stations, to delivering electricity to cities, to people using the power, the entire process is almost synchronous.
Generally speaking, the total amount of electricity supplied by the power station to the city at each time period is strictly in accordance with the pre-established standards.
In the case of a fixed total amount of power supply, if the city's electricity consumption decreases within a certain period of time, there is no place to store the excess electric energy, and it will be wasted.
The reverse is also true, if the city's electricity consumption suddenly increases due to special reasons, exceeding the constant power supply, and the hydropower station has no electric energy storage, it will face the dilemma of power shortage.
With the advent of pumped storage power plants, all these problems have been solved.
There are significant differences between pumped storage power plants and conventional hydropower plants. Generally speaking, pumped storage power plants are located in the middle of a mountainous area at a higher altitude, with two reservoirs, one high and one low, and pipelines are laid between the two reservoirs to connect with each other.
Seeing such a design, do you think of the seesaw we played with when we were children, in fact, the pumped storage power station is designed based on the "seesaw principle".
When the city has abundant electricity, the pumped storage power station will use the excess part of the city's electricity to pump the water from the lower reservoir to the reservoir on the top of the hill for storage.
When the city's electricity supply is in short supply, the pumped storage power station converts the water stored in the reservoir into electricity in a timely manner by reusing the mode of hydropower generation, and transmits it to thousands of households in a timely manner.
Although this process of energy storage seems to be very troublesome, pumped hydro has become the best solution for storing electricity in the world today due to its many advantages.
In addition to realizing the spatiotemporal transfer of electric energy, it plays the role of "peak shaving and valley filling". Pumped storage power stations can also be used for frequency and phase modulation of the power system to improve the quality of hydropower generation
At the same time, pumped storage power plants can also be used as a backup power source for the grid. In the event of a power system failure or other reasons that cause a power supply to be interrupted, the pumped storage power plant can be quickly started to ensure that the power supply is running normally.
Fengning Hydropower Station for the benefit of the country and the people
It is precisely because of the pumped storage power station that there are so many advantages that experts will believe that the Fengning pumped storage hydropower station is a sure deal.
After the completion of the Fengning pumped storage power station, its total installed capacity is as high as 3600KW, which enables the hydropower station to change from a full-load pumping state to a power generation state in just 5 minutes.
This is also why pumped storage power stations can well support the strategy of "foreign power into Hebei".
In 2023, the No. 12 unit of Fengning Pumped Storage Hydropower Station will be officially put into use, which is the first variable-speed pumped storage generator in the mainland.
After all 12 pumped generating units were put into operation, the pumped storage capacity of Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station has been greatly improved. It can consume at least 8.8 billion kWh of excess electricity and generate 66.12 kWh of electricity every year, supplying 2.6 million households with electricity for a year.
With the pumped storage power station fully put into use, this also means that there will be no worries about electricity consumption in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of the mainland in the future.
As for the so-called "100 kWh of electricity for 80 kWh". The 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed by pumped storage power stations is the surplus electricity generated during normal power generation, and if it is not stored in time, it will cause a waste of electricity.
After storing this surplus electricity, the pumped storage power station converts it into "80 kWh of electricity" for urban use in times of power shortage.
Therefore, no matter from which point of view, Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station is a project that benefits the country and the people. It not only avoids the waste of electric energy, but also provides power assistance at critical moments.
What do you think about this, please leave a message in the comment area to discuss.