Taum Sauk pumped storage plant
| Taum Sauk Hydroelectric Power Station | |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Location | St. Francois Mountains, Missouri |
| Coordinates | 37°31′14″N 90°50′04″W / 37.52056°N 90.83444°WCoordinates: 37°31′14″N 90°50′04″W / 37.52056°N 90.83444°W |
| Status | Operational |
| Construction began | 1960 |
| Commission date | December 20, 1963 |
| Construction cost | $50 million USD (1963), $490 million USD rebuild (2010) |
| Owner(s) | Ameren Missouri (AmerenUE) |
| Operator(s) | Ameren Missouri (AmerenUE) |
| Pumped-storage power station | |
| Upper res. capacity | 1.5 billion U.S. gallons (5.7 GL) |
| Lower res. capacity | 2.1 billion U.S. gallons (8 GL) |
| Hydraulic head | 860 feet |
| Pump-generators | 2 |
| Power generation | |
| Nameplate capacity | 450 MW |
| Capacity factor | 70% efficiency, unknown capacity factor |
| Storage capacity | 8 hours (3600 MW·h) |
The Taum Sauk pumped storage plant is in the St. Francois mountain region of the Missouri Ozarks about 90 miles (140 km) south of St. Louis near Lesterville, Missouri, in Reynolds County. It is operated by the AmerenUE electric company.
The pumped-storage hydroelectric plant was built to help meet peak power demands during the day. Electrical generators are turned by water flowing from a reservoir on top of Proffit Mountain into a lower reservoir on the East Fork of the Black River. At night, excess electricity on the power grid is used to pump water back to the mountaintop.
The Taum Sauk plant is an open-loop pure pumped operation: unlike some other pumped storage sites, there is no natural primary flow into the upper reservoir available for generation. It is therefore a net consumer of electricity; the laws of thermodynamics dictate that more power is used to pump the water up the mountain than is generated when it comes down. However, the plant is still economical to operate because the upper reservoir is refilled at night, when the electrical generation system is running at low-cost baseline capacity. This ability to store huge amounts of energy led its operator to call Taum Sauk "the biggest battery that we have".
Construction on Taum Sauk began in 1960, and it went into operation in 1963 with two reversible pump-turbine units that could each generate 175 megawatts (235,000 hp) of power. It was not licensed by the Federal Power Commission (the predecessor of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) because Union Electric contended that the FPC did not have jurisdiction over the non-navigable headwaters where the power station was constructed. In FPC v. Union Elec. Co., 381 U.S. 90 (1965), the United States Supreme Court held that the FPC did have jurisdiction and that Taum Sauk did require a FPC license. Although designed and built without federal supervision, a license was retroactively granted.
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