High-rise building mini-hydro pumped-storage scheme with Shanghai Jinmao Tower as a case study

High-rise buildings are everywhere with heavy electrical loads in metropolis, and their gravity potential energy can be utilized to develop mini-hydro pumped-storage scheme to decrease many negative impacts on the power system, like the large of load peak-valley difference (PVD), the large of fluctuation of load as well as integrated renewable distribution generation(DG). Shanghai Jinmao Tower with 420.5 m high is taken as a case study. China “Load Code for the Design of Building Structure” is introduced for the roof tank design. Shanghai time-of-use electricity pricing mechanism is used for daily benefit calculation. An optimal operation model has been built for parameter selection. The proposal of installed hydro power and pump are 2400 kW and 3600 kW respectively with a global efficiency of 0.6624. Daily income is 2800 with annual benefit 1 million and 5 yrs return, seems a very attractive investment. The hydro power capacity is about 37% of existed emergence standby generation, and the good compensation of pumped-storage for the large fluctuation of proposed photovoltaic (PV) to meet the sensitive load in isolated micro-grid operation, show the another advantage.