This document summarizes a student project on implementing a pumped storage hydroelectricity system at the Deir Ammar power plant in Lebanon. The power plant currently reduces output during low demand night hours, decreasing gas turbine efficiency. A pumped storage system was proposed to store excess nighttime energy as gravitational potential energy by pumping water to an upper reservoir. During peak daytime hours, the stored water would be released through reversible pump turbines to generate additional electricity. System design was based on plant data, with components sized to provide 120 MW of generation capacity and store 840,000 kWh daily. Economic analysis estimated costs around $156 million with profits of $23.7 million annually, yielding an 8 year payback period and 70 year

1. Student (s) Name: Azzam Kamzoul – Joseph Jrad.
Phone(s): 71/348287 – 71/662834.
University: Lebanese University.
Project Title: Pumped storage hydroelectricity.
Supervisor(s): Dr. Tannous Chalhoub.
Category: Mechanical engineering.
Abstract: The project is called Pumped storage hydropower, and it’s integrated in Deir Ammar
power plant.
The power station has an installed capacity of 450 MW; however this value is reduced to 300
MW during the night hours (from 12 am to 7 am) due to the low consumption. This reduction
leads to the decrease of the gas turbines efficiency. In addition, the current production doesn’t
meet the needs of the market especially at peak hours. From here, we can conclude the necessity
of the pumped storage hydroelectricity system which is the best solution to these two issues.
The concept of the project is to make use of the decrease of the power demand at night to pump
water through a reversible pump turbine to an upper reservoir placed at Terbol mountain at 400
m in order to stock energy in form of gravitational energy and use it during the day especially at
peak hours to supply more electricity to the grid.
We started by showing the development of the project worldwide, then we discussed the
behavior of the gas turbines when working at part load. We also showed the variation of the load
during the day and the deficit in the Lebanese electricity sector.
Then based on the data taken from the station, a full design for each component is made after a
deep explanation on the plant and the considerations that should be taken while designing a
reversible pump turbine as well as when using seawater .
At the end the results concluded in the project were very interesting, where the system’s
efficiency is 80% giving a generating capacity of 120 MW and an ability to produce 840 000
KWH daily, also from an economic point of view the estimated cost is about 156 million US$,
and the annual profits is 23.7 million US$, leading to a payback period of 8 years and a service
life of 70 years.
Key words: Deir Ammar - Reversible pump turbine – Gas Turbine – Energy storage.