The City of San Diego and the San Diego Water Authority are evaluating the feasibility of developing a pumped storage hydro project at the City of San Diego’s San Vicente reservoir to provide energy storage and ancillary electrical services into the southern Californian grid. It would store 4,000 megawatt-hours per day (500 megawatts of capacity for eight hours), enough energy for about 135,000 households. The development of the project is key to achieving California’s 100% zero-carbon electricity mandate by 2045 and the need for long-term storage assets to support that goal.
Knight Piésold was engaged by the EPC contractor, Kiewit Infrastructure, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy as their lead designer for the 500 MW San Vicente Pumped Storage Hydro Project and is responsible for overall project optimization and detailed design of the following:
Although the use of the existing San Vicente reservoir makes the project more economically attractive, it does create some interesting challenges that were overcome by the design team, including: