Control of a small variable speed pumped-storage power plant

Variable speed pumped-storage energy systems have recently received significant attention in the renewable energy field, due to its overall efficiency and great potential available worldwide. This emergent technology allows improving the potential of these systems in terms of global efficiency, smoothing the power fluctuations and simplifying the burden classical governing mechanical systems. In this paper, a small variable speed pumped-storage plant with full scale power electronics interface and permanent magnet motor generator is proposed. This approach has been experimentally validated by using a dedicated test rig.