Utilizing water towers for pumped storage hydropower

Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) stores electrical energy as gravitational potential energy. Water is pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher one and later flows back to the lower reservoir through a turbine. For areas with naturally large elevation changes, PSH has been an effective way to store excess energy produced from renewable sources. However, areas that have relatively small elevation changes require man-made height differences for PSH. Water towers could provide the required height differences. Here, three different water tower designs with varying pipe and Pelton Wheel Turbine nozzle diameters are examined numerically to determine an optimal configuration for energy storage. Maximum water level and Pelton Wheel blade angle are held constant. The results suggest that each water tower has a maximum energy capacity that can be achieved with multiple combinations of pipe and nozzle diameter.