Sunday, October 16, 2005

Engineering Wonder Number 9

Pumped Storage Turbines
View of penstocks and turbines


Jointly owned by Consumers and Detroit Edison, this 110 foot deep reservoir holds 27 billion gallons of water 363 feet above lake level. Operates as a Kinetic Energy storage battery for electric power. Water is pumped from the lake into the reservoir when generation capacity is higher than demand. Water flows back through the turbines into the lake re-generating electricity during periods of higher demand. It has a holding capacity of 1872 megawatts. That's a whole lot of Ready-Kilo-Watts.

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