Are cross-border electricity transmission and pumped hydro storage complementary technologies?

The aim of this paper is to analyse the degree to which cross-border electricity transmission and pumped hydro storage substitute or complement each other. The impacts of these two technical assets on annual dispatch costs, curtailment of variable renewable energy sources (RES) and CO₂ emissions, as well as their impacts on one another, are analysed in a power system with a high RES penetration. EUPowerDispatch, a minimum cost dispatch model of the European power system, is used to compare different scenarios with varying cross-border electricity transmission and hydro pumping capacities. The results show that increasing cross-border transmission capacity or hydro pumping capacity reduces annual dispatch costs, RES curtailment needs and CO₂ emissions. The study concludes that cross-border transmission and hydro pumped storage substitute one another and that under certain conditions they can be considered as complementary technologies.