Criteria and Tradeoffs for Evaluating Pumped Storage Generation

Tonight\u27s paper was originally presented last fall to the International Energy Engineering Congress in Chicago by Dwight Glasscock, Vice President of Hydro & Water Resources Division, Chas . T. Main, Inc. It has been amplified since then and will become a Company publication on Pumped Storage. Its central theme is that pumped storage generation in its economic aspect resembles that of a thermal generating plant; it has a capital cost and it consumes fuel , namely off peak energy, which it converts at limited efficiency to produce electrical energy on demand. Paradoxically a pumped storage plant which is physically very similar to a hydro-electric plant operates economically as if it were a thermal generating station