https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/12/02/northfield-mountain-hydroelectric-station

Skip to main content
 
Local Coverage
LISTEN LIVE: Marketplace
DONATE
 
Local Coverage
LISTEN LIVE: Marketplace
DONATE
Local Coverage

  * Archive

Listen Live
 

Sections

  * Local Coverage
  * Arts & Culture
  * Business
  * Education
  * Environment
  * Health
  * Investigations
  * Cognoscenti
  * Boston News Quiz

Radio

  * On-Air Schedule
  * Morning Edition
  * On Point
  * Here & Now
  * Radio Boston
  * All Things Considered
  * Ways To Listen
  * All Radio Programs

Podcasts

  * Endless Thread
  * Circle Round
  * Last Seen
  * Anything For Selena
  * Dear Sugars
  * Consider This
  * All Podcasts

CitySpace

  * Event Calendar
  * Watch Past Events
  * Rentals
  * Events Newsletter

Support

  * Make A Donation
  * Become A Member
  * Member Services
  * Donate Your Car
  * Join The Murrow Society

Subscribe to our weekday newsletter

Add WBUR to your morning routine

The email address entered is invalid
[                    ]
It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative emailThank
you! You have been subscribed to WBUR Today.We were unable to
subscribe you to WBUR Today. You can try subscribing here or try
again later.

Advertisement

 
Home//Local Coverage

New England's Largest Battery Is Hidden Inside A Mass. Mountain08:44
 
X

Copy the code below to embed the WBUR audio player on your site

[<iframe width="100%"]

Copy embed code

Play
Updated December 02, 2016

  * Bruce Gellerman 

    
Inside the Northfield Mountain pumped storage hydroelectric station
(Jesse Costa/WBUR)
Inside the Northfield Mountain pumped storage hydroelectric station
(Jesse Costa/WBUR)This article is more than 5 years old.

Part of a series on new energy storage solutions being developed in
Massachusetts 

It was Boston-born Ben Franklin who first used the term "battery" to
describe an electric storage device. Now, nearly three centuries
later, Massachusetts is hoping to jump-start the development of new
kinds of batteries to power the future.

The state has launched a $10 million Energy Storage Initiative. The
10-year goal: Save electric ratepayers hundreds of million dollars,
make the electrical grid more reliable and resilient, and reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.

Today's batteries come in all shapes and sizes. The largest in New
England -- and once the world -- was built 45 years ago and is still
working.

But it's hidden, on top and deep inside a mountain in north-central
Massachusetts.

'Well, There's A Power Plant Underground'

The upper reservoir is the battery that powers the Northfield
Mountain pumped hydroelectric station. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)The upper
reservoir is the battery that powers the Northfield Mountain pumped
hydroelectric station. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Northfield Mountain is a naturalist's wonderland. But if you look
around, you'll see an unnatural site: a 5-billion-gallon battery.

"So what you're looking at right here is the upper reservoir, and I
consider this to be the battery for the station," says Gus Bakas,
director of Massachusetts hydro operations for FirstLight Power
Resources.

The company owns and operates the Northfield Mountain pumped storage
hydroelectric station. The generators are powered by this manmade
mountaintop lake.

"So this is our supply, our stored energy, similar to a battery,"
Bakas continues. "So when we need that battery to turn on, we would
take this water and we would run it into the facility to produce
power."

The hydroelectric generating facility is located hundreds of feet
below the reservoir, hidden deep inside the hollowed-out Northfield
Mountain. But you'd never know it, except for an occasional hint.

"There are people that have been coming here for 30 years," Bakas
says, "and somebody will ask, 'What are those wires?' And somebody
will explain, 'Well, there's a power plant underground.' "

Typically public tours aren't allowed, in part due to security
concerns. Typically...

The Batcave

The entrance to the plant (Jesse Costa/WBUR)The entrance to the plant
(Jesse Costa/WBUR)

We go past a security fence, under the watchful eyes of surveillance
cameras. We come to a hole in the mountain, chiseled out of gray
granite. It's wider than Boston's Sumner Tunnel.

"Right now we're going to drive through a portal door that gives us
access to the underground project," Bakas says.

It's enormous, and looks like the Batcave.

"That's funny, that's what we call it sometimes," Bakas says. "It's
like James Bond, or 'Get Smart' -- remember 'Get Smart' from the '60s?
"

The Northfield pumped hydro plant was built in the late 1960s. The
tunnel leads to the giant generating station inside.

"When this facility was built, it was actually the largest pumped
storage facility in the world," Bakas says. "This facility here is
capable of just under 1,200 megawatts, so we're good for well over a
million homes."

Water from the reservoir, now high overhead, flows through four
18-foot-diameter conduits drilled into the rock. Gravity and powerful
pumps force the water down to the hydro plant carved into Northfield
Mountain. The water spins the electric-generating turbines.

To recharge the battery and get water back up to the mountaintop
reservoir, the pumps work in reverse.

When Northfield was constructed, the electricity for the pumps came
from the then-just-built Yankee nuclear power plant located a few
miles up the Connecticut River.

Advertisement

 

"Vermont Yankee being a nuclear power plant generates power 24/7, or
what they call base load," Bakas says. "So as a result of that at
night they had all this excess power on the grid. So somebody needed
to take it. So this plant was conceived and built to take that
off-peak power and utilize it through pumping water during off-peak
periods."

Actually, the Sisyphean labor of pumping water up and down the
mountain is a net energy loss -- more electricity is used then
generated. But because off-peak electricity costs less than the price
Northfield gets for what it generates when demand is high, the system
is a moneymaker.

Buy low, sell high.

'The Sound Of Money'

The road into the entry portal of the "Batcave" (Jesse Costa/WBUR)The
road into the entry portal of the "Batcave" (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

We arrive at the underground workaday world of operations manager
Doug Bennett.

"So right now you're about 750 feet inside the mountain, about a half
a mile in, and you're in the control room," Bennett says. "And this
is where the guys here are going to start the machines, and they're
going to monitor that operation."

The Northfield Mountain pumped storage hydroelectric station is still
in the process of converting from old analog controls to digital
systems.

An ancient red rotary telephone stands at the ready. It's a direct
link to ISO New England, which operates the electrical grid and
decides which plants go online.

"When they call there it's either to confirm something going on or
there's an urgent need," Bennett says. "We like the sound of that
phone; that is the sound of money."

We go next onto an observation deck overlooking the four generators.

"The facility here is about 100 yards long and 10 stories high,"
Bakas says. "You know, you can read about it, you can look at videos
online, but to be underground and actually see it and experience it,
I think really drives the point that this is a pretty unique
facility."

The Northfield Mountain pumped storage station provides nearly
instantaneous power on demand. When the red phone rings and the call
comes from ISO New England, energy, in the form of the water battery,
flows into the turbines at 27,000 gallons a second.

And the generators roar. Each produces nearly 400,000 horsepower,
together producing as much electricity as the Seabrook Station
Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire.

"We could theoretically provide from zero megawatts to 1,168
megawatts in about 10 minutes," Bakas says, "so if there was a
contingent loss on the grid, we could make it up pretty quick."

And the generators can produce electricity for about eight hours,
flat out.

'Where Does Pumped Storage Play Going Forward?'

Gus Bakas, director of Massachusetts hydro operations for FirstLight
Power Resources (Jesse Costa/WBUR)Gus Bakas, director of
Massachusetts hydro operations for FirstLight Power Resources (Jesse
Costa/WBUR)

The U.S. Department of Energy has big plans for battery systems like
this. Pumped hydro is the most cost-effective way to store
electricity. Ninety-nine percent of the bulk electric storage in the
world is pumped hydro, and by 2050 the department wants to nearly
double the amount now produced: enough to serve nearly 25 million
homes.

"I guess the question is," Bakas says, "where does pumped storage
play going forward?"

He says Northfield Mountain is now undergoing re-licensing to run for
another 50 years and believes the half-century-old facility can serve
a new role in the future.

Since the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant shut down two years ago,
Northfield has been buying its off-peak operating power straight off
the grid. But as more solar and wind comes online, Bakas believes the
pumped storage generating station could one day run as a totally
climate-friendly supplier of electricity.

"I think the goal of our facility would be to look at the
opportunities to purchase purely green, renewable power and be able
to supply green power to the grid," he says.

At the foot of Northfield Mountain, the company operates an
18,000-panel solar farm. It covers 10 acres and generates
two megawatts.

It's just a drop in the bucket of that produced by the pumped hydro
station, but it's a start.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the size of the
company's solar farm. We regret the error. 

This article was originally published on December 02, 2016.

This segment aired on December 2, 2016.

WBUR's Morning EditionSearching For The Renewable Energy Holy Grail

Related:

  * Nation's First Offshore Wind Farm To Start Spinning Soon Off
    Rhode Island
  * What Moakley Courthouse's Old-School Cooling System Could Teach
    Us About Energy Storage

[Gellerman_]

Bruce Gellerman  Senior Reporter
Bruce Gellerman is an award-winning journalist and senior
correspondent, frequently covering science, business, technology and
the environment.

More...

Advertisement

 

Advertisement

 
Play
Listen Live
Marketplace
/00:00

Contact Us

(617) 353-0909
info@wbur.org
890 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston, MA 02215
More ways to get in touch.

About WBUR

  * Who We Are
  * Inside WBUR
  * Careers
  * WBUR Staff
  * Community Advisory Board
  * Board Of Directors
  * CPB Transparency
  * Diversity, Equity And Inclusion

Support WBUR

  * Make A Donation
  * Become A Member
  * Member Services
  * Donate Your Car
  * Join The Murrow Society
  * Become A Sponsor
  * Volunteer

Follow

  *  Facebook
  *  Twitter
  * Instagram
  * YouTube
  * LinkedIn

Subscribe to our weekday newsletter

Add WBUR to your morning routine

The email address entered is invalid
[                    ]
It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative emailThank
you! You have been subscribed to WBUR Today.We were unable to
subscribe you to WBUR Today. You can try subscribing here or try
again later.

  * (c) Copyright WBUR 2022
  * Policies & Statements
  * FCC Public File
  * WBUR EEO Reports
  * FCC Applications
  * Syndication