Slatinice in Czechia plan to build pumped-storage plant, which would also help prevent flooding

The spa town of Slatinice in the Olomouc region plans to build a pumped-storage hydropower plant on Malý Kosíř hill. The town also wants to store electricity generated by photovoltaic panels on the roofs of the local school, the sports club changing rooms and the Sokol hall by pumping water into the upper reservoir. The pumped-storage plant, with a 2.5-megawatt turbine, would then supply local households, businesses and municipal infrastructure when electricity demand is high. Slatinice Mayor Ondřej Mikmek (KDU-ČSL) told CTK today.

The municipal authorities have already prepared a project that, according to their calculations, would require an investment of 150 million crowns. A grant would cover part of the costs; Mikmek said the construction could not go ahead without one. The project envisages building an upper and a lower reservoir, each with a capacity of 28.000 cubic metres. Water would be pumped into the upper reservoir when local photovoltaic power plants are generating electricity and the system has a surplus. The town also wants to use electricity at night, when prices are lower. It plans to fill both reservoirs with water from a stream and local sources. “Only water lost to evaporation would need to be replenished,” Mikmek noted.

The town already has a project safety study and financial calculations of the investment’s payback period. Experts have calculated that if a grant covered 70 percent of the costs, the investment in the pumped-storage plant would pay back in around 20 years, after which its operation would be profitable. With a 35 percent grant, the payback period would be 40 to 50 years. The plant’s expected lifespan is around 80 years. “The most important task now will be to convince the councillors that it makes sense. The Sigma company from nearby Lutín is helping us, because this could be a pilot project for other small pumped-storage plants in the Czech Republic,” Mikmek said.

Pumped-storage plants serve as enormous batteries. In the energy system, they are used both to make use of surplus energy, which is then used to pump water from the lower to the upper reservoir, and when energy is in short supply, when they generate electricity instead. Pumped-storage plants are playing an increasingly important role in balancing the unstable supply of energy from renewable sources.

According to the mayor, the lower reservoir of the pumped-storage hydropower plant in Slatinice would also serve as flood protection. It would include a 13-metre-high dam in a ravine through which a stream flows. Mikmek noted that roughly once every 12 years, during a severe cloudburst, water flowing down the ravine from the surrounding slopes floods part of Slatinice. The dam should prevent this.