Community Highlights

The PSH Cost Model Web App, hosted on OpenEI, provides an interactive framework for estimating the lifecycle costs of pumped storage hydropower (PSH) projects. Users can adjust site characteristics, design parameters, and financial assumptions to evaluate capital expenditures, operations and maintenance costs, and economic feasibility. The platform is designed to support structured cost discussions among developers, planners, and financing partners evaluating long-duration energy storage projects.

By increasing visibility into cost drivers and enabling standardized modeling approaches, the tool advances transparent economic analysis for pumped storage development.

NREL PSH Cost Model Web App

Full-scale testing of new hydropower technologies is key to future hydropower innovations, according to research by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In a report entitled “Needs and Opportunities for Testing of Hydropower Technology Innovations,” the research team highlights the need for hydropower testing facilities that allow full-scale, high hydraulic capacity testing. Such facilities would enable demonstrations of new technologies under realistic operating conditions, lowering the risk for industry adoption. The researchers also identified important characteristics for these testing facilities and some promising pathways to establish such a testing network. 

More information available from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.