A brief review of underground coal mine energy storage

Energy Matters



As reported in last week’s Blowout the latest solution to the problem of storing intermittent renewable energy for re-use is to convert an underground coal mine into a pumped hydro facility. The mine in question is Prosper-Haniel in the Ruhr region of Germany, which is scheduled to shut down next year. Following shutdown it is anticipated that the mine workings will form the lower reservoir and that an upper reservoir will be constructed on the surface (inset) – basically the same concept as the Flat Land Energy Storage (FLES) scheme discussed in Euan Mearns’ earlier post. Here we take a quick look at this approach.


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