Assessment of the Pumped Storage Hydropower Impact on the Energy Balance of Mongolian Central Power System

Due to the growth of the population and economy of Mongolia, the electricity consumption has been increasing very rapidly in recent years. As of 2020-2023, there is a shortage of electricity in Mongolia. Some restrictions have been applied, since the volume of imported and generated electricity was not enough to supply the population. In recent years, any large-scale power generation projects have not been put into operation. There is the severe problem with insufficient system capacity that resulting to system instability. Mongolia imports about $20 \%$ of its electricity consumption. As part of the project “Stability of Energy Management”, concluded under a contract with the Association of Renewable Energy Producers, it is planned to build pumped storage hydroelectric power plants. The new pumped storage power plants are mainly supposed to play a regulating role in the peak load demand of the unified central energy system. The optimization strategy will be aimed to cover sharply variable peak loads, as well as to increase the share of renewable energy in Mongolia energy balance. The article presents the results of assessing the impact of pumped storage power plants on the energy balance of the central power system of Mongolia.