The installed capacity of pumped storage power plants (PSPPs) in Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, will rise from 2.3 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 to more than 18 GW in 2033, according to a forecast by Rystad Energy. The industry could attract up to US$70 billion in investments during that period.
A key contribution to this increase will be made by the Philippines, which has projects with a total capacity of 5.7 GW at the pre-investment stage, according to The Global Energy Association report. Meanwhile, projects totaling 4.5 GW and 4.2 GW are planned in Vietnam and Indonesia, respectively, with 1.6 GW of capacities planned in Thailand.
The launch of new capacities will help balance the energy system in the context of the rapid development of renewable energy sources. As a rule, pumped storage power plants are equipped with two water reservoirs with an elevation difference: in the conditions of low demand, cheaper electricity from the common grid is used to pump water from the lower reservoir into the upper one, from which it gets discharged into the lower reservoir in the hours of growing load on the grid, setting off water turbines.
In the period from 2013 to 2023, ASEAN countries, which include Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Singapore in addition to Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, increased the capacity of their renewable energy-based power plants more than fivefold (from 9.4 GW to 48.6 GW, excluding hydroelectric power plants).
The overall share of wind generators, solar panels and biomass units in the energy mix of ASEAN countries went up from 4.6% to 10.0% over that period, while all types of HPPs remained at 15.5%. Therefore, the launch of new PSPPs will allow the countries of the region to get their hydropower infrastructure up to speed with the development of all other renewables.
Unlike other means of energy storage, the efficiency of PSPPs, i.e., the ratio of regenerated electricity to stored kinetic electricity, does not depend on the number of charge-discharge cycles. The maximum service life of PSPPs exceeds 75 years, while lithium-ion batteries can withstand no more than 15 years of use (although energy storage devices become obsolete much faster).
This largely explains the acceleration of the pace of bringing pumped storage power plants into operation: according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), a total of 14.8 GW of PSPPs were launched worldwide in 2022–2023, exceeding the aggregate capacity of PSPPs launched in 2016–2021 (13.1 GW). The main contributor to the construction of new PSPPs was China, which put 14.5 GW of pumped storage capacities in operation; the remaining 0.3 GW came from Europe and North America.
