Role of Pumped Hydro Storage to Mitigate Intermittency in Renewable Energy Systems

The ever-increasing demand for energy in the background of environmental concern is paving the way for replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. While hydropower is one of the most significant contributors in this sector for a long time, recent growth in renewables is coming from solar energy and wind energy. Despite their strong position of sustainability, a major problem of these sectors is the intermittent nature of energy supply. Hence, to suppress such fluctuations, energy storage is essential. Pumped hydro storage (PHS) in this context is one of the most attractive choices due to high efficiency, reliability and low cost. This paper discusses the use of PHS for removing the intermittency in supplies from solar and wind energy. The current state-of-art indicates that PHS shall be increasingly used in coming decades for energy generation in renewable and hybrid renewable sectors.