Pumped storage system for wind energy in variable operating conditions

Pumped storage is undoubtedly a mature technology, which has lately drawn the attention for facilitating the renewable energy integration. High quantities of unpredictable energy can be stored avoiding grid stability problems. The purpose of the paper is the analysis of a pumped storage for wind energy, considering different power orders (MW and kW) operating in variable conditions. Moreover, a drive control is implemented by means of power electronics in order to increase the system´s efficiency. The results are compared with the classical V/Hz control. An increase of at least 10% is obtained for both MW and kW order of power.