ABSTRACT
At present, most of the rural parts and remote areas are suffering from energy crisis. Environmental impact has triggered renewable energy sources as viable and sustainable sources of energy. To limit the impact of intermittent nature in power generation via renewable energy sources, storage of energy is essential. A remote area is selected where a small hydro power plant of 200 kW already exists. It is located 25 km before Gangotri in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand. The area is facing difficulties in supplying electricity due to limited generation through small hydro. In this chapter, a small-scale pumped storage of 350 kW capacity is proposed as an energy storage device for hybrid system comprising solar and hydro power generation of 160 kW and 300 kW, respectively. To evaluate the performance and economy (per unit cost of energy), hybrid optimization model for electric renewable (HOMER) is used. As HOMER software does not include inbuilt model for pumped storage facility, therefore a detailed analysis has been provided to model the pumped storage as an equivalent battery. The simulation results show that pumped storage can be adequately represented by battery, and the unit cost of energy of hybrid system is observed as 12.31 INR/kWh.
