Visit to a Project at John Day Pool
Staff at the office, along with folks from Ecology, visited the Klickitat County PUD1 site for a closed-loop pump storage hydropower project at the John Day pool. This is being funded in part by the Clean Energy Fund through appropriations by the 2018 legislature.
A closed loop system consists of two reservoirs at different elevations, and apart from a free flowing water source, such as a river. They have fewer environmental impacts. The system generates power as water moves down through a turbine and draws power as it pumps water to the upper reservoir.
Pumped-storage hydro-power currently accounts for 95 percent of all utility-scale energy storage in the United States.