Laurentian Energy Plant
Northeastern
The Laurentian Energy
Plant project provides dependable renewable energy with no air pollution, helps meet the land and water-management
objectives of organizations like the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
and the Central Iron Range Planning Commission, and stimulates the economy by
providing long term, high technology industrial development and employment.
Proximity to existing transmission and distribution infrastructure adds
flexibility in delivering competitively priced energy to either the local
About Wind
Energy
Wind power+
pump storage + hydroelectricity = Clean, safe energy on demand: Wind power is a growing industry, and
Minnesota has wind-power turbines set on towers and clustered in groups called
"farms", dotting the rural landscape. Last year, 1700 MW of wind power were
installed nationwide, supplying enough energy for 425,000 homes. However, wind has long been viewed as a
relatively unpredictable and somewhat unreliable energy source compared to
fossil-fuels, in part because it is difficult to match the supply of wind
energy with demand. The wind does not always blow when you need it or want it
to.
About Pump
Storage & Hydroelectric Power
Pump
storage and hydroelectric power provide a means of making wind energy a more
dependable source by storing wind energy as potential water energy. Pump storage creates hydroelectric power by
first moving supplies of water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir and
converting kinetic energy from the pump into potential energy of water stored
at a higher elevation. When water stored
in reservoirs at higher elevation flows to reservoirs at lower elevation, the
potential energy of the water is released as kinetic energy through a steel
pipe (called a penstock) and into the hydroturbine to spin impellers that
create electricity. This process can generate electric power as needed with
output matched to demand. Because pump storage is a closed loop system with
water transferred only between upper and lower reservoirs, it does not have the
same negative environmental impacts on watersheds, wildlife and communities
that traditional large scale hydro plants located on rivers have had. Wind+Pump
Storage+Hydro is environmentally friendly and renewable in a very true sense.
What would
the project look like? The proposed
project could best be described as an "energy park" hosting wind and hydro
energy. The proposed project would involve many one- to two-megawatt wind
turbines standing 65 to 80 m tall, located on the high ridges of the Laurentian
Divide and supplying electricity either directly to the transmission grid or to
a series of large pumps. When energy from wind is not in demand (typically
during low use periods), the pumps would have the capability of moving large
volumes of water through a supply line between the lower and upper
reservoir. At the upper reservoir, an
intake would control the level of the reservoir and the flow of water into a
penstock. When the gates of the intake
are open, water is carried by the penstock down to the power house, which
contains the hydro turbines. While only two mine pits will be used in the first
phase, other pits nearby and a large mine-tailings basin could be used to
expand the project over time to form a chain of reservoirs. The project could
potentially supply several hundred megawatts of energy, equivalent to a single
coal fired power plant.
Contact: Jim Kochevar
Manager,
PUC