Is this Pa.’s new hydropower moment?

Two Berks County engineers have launched the latest proposal to boost Pennsylvania’s electricity production by using one of its oldest energy sources: river water.

Taking a first key step, York Energy Storage LLC applied Feb. 6 to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for approval to conduct a four-year feasibility study of a $2.1 billion dam and power turbine project. It would use water pumped from the Susquehanna River to keep the region’s electric power flowing, especially when the state’s solar and wind plants aren’t making power.

The proposal says the plant would produce up to 8,560 megawatt-hours in a 10-hour cycle, enough to power a city of half a million people, or to replace one of the nuclear power units from the former complex at nearby Three Mile Island.

» READ MORE: From 2019: Three Mile Island’s 60-year shutdown: ‘More akin to a marathon than a sprint'

Rising demand for electric vehicles, computing, and home appliances, combined with public disdain for carbon-based fossil fuels and the slow pace of approvals for new nuclear power plant designs, has pushed utilities to rely more on solar and wind power projects, backed by government subsidies.

Since those systems don’t run constantly, electric grids that rely on them need backup sources of power. The York Energy Storage plan offers “pumped storage,” where surplus power from peak production periods is used to pump water into reservoirs that can run turbines when needed.

The proposal calls for a reservoir to be built on properties totaling 1,000 acres in Chanceford, York County. The water would power turbines to generate electricity as it falls hundreds of feet to the river downstream. That new reservoir would require a 1.9-mile long, 225-foot high dam on land west of the river, plus two smaller dikes. The project would take several years to build.

The York Electric Storage proposal is led by William McMahon, founder of Entech Engineering, a Reading-based power systems engineering company, and Jan Sockel, a past senior executive at Princeton-based natural gas and electric supplier NRG.

“We are beginning to plan meetings with the local authorities,” McMahon said in an interview. “Power grids in the United States have gotten very thin. Texas and California have had brownouts because they didn’t have enough power backup or storage in their systems to account for variables,” such as extreme weather.

He said the Susquehanna is well-located to provide power to PJM Interconnection, the Audubon, Montgomery County-based regional transmission organization that coordinates electricity delivery to 65 million customers across 13 states.

The proposal says it would create 300 construction jobs. Once built, it would be run by a staff of 25, using Pennsyvlania-built turbines and local services.

Anticipating concerns from neighbors, environmental advocates, and regulators, the proposal promises at least 18 studies of fish, water flow, animals, archaeology, geology, tax, and electricity price impacts, which it says will cost at least $8 million.

The Susquehanna is already home to a string of hydropower dams and pumped storage plants of varying sizes. The largest include the 573-megawatt power plant operated by Exelon spin-off Constellation Energy at Conowingo Dam where U.S. Route 1 crosses the river in northern Maryland, and Constellation’s 1,070-megawatt Muddy Run Pumped Storage plant and reservoir in southern Lancaster County.

The York Energy Storage proposed site is close to a 418-megawatt hydropower station at the 91-year-old Safe Harbor Dam, which backs up the Susquehanna behind it into a miles-long sheet of flat water known as Lake Clarke, which would be a source for the new reservoir.

That power station and dam have been owned since 2014 by Brookfield Renewable Energy Corp., a subsidiary of Canada-based Brookfield Asset Management. Brookfield also owns a second power-producing dam on the Susquehanna, at Holtwood, Lancaster County, and two smaller facilities elsewhere in the state. In all, “our Pennsylvania facilities provide enough power to supply over 200,000 homes annually with renewable power,” said Simon Maine, a spokesman for Brookfield.

Brookfield plans more such investments around the U.S. It has raised $1.2 billion from Pennsylvania’s largest taxpayer-supported pension fund, the Public School Employees’ Retirement System, since 2015 for real estate and infrastructure projects. In December, trustees approved $300 million for Brookfield to invest in “clean energy” projects to “decarbonize” electric grids from dependence on natural gas and other fossil fuels.

Brookfield has lately been buying up “U.S.-based renewable [power] developers,” spokesman Maine added, and hydropower “fits well within the fund’s strategy.”

Another dam, at York Haven, north of Safe Harbor, along with its small power plant, was part of a group of U.S. hydro plants purchased from U.S. private-equity owners in 2019 by the government of the Province of Ontario, Canada, where Brookfield is based. Power from rivers and reservoirs is so common in Canada that electricity is often called “hydro” there.

Pumped storage projects are among the sustainable energy plans that have attracted energy contractors eager to qualify for multibillion-dollar energy finance programs passed by Congress since 2001, said Adam Rousselle, chief executive of Renewable Energy Aggregators. That Pittston, Luzerne County-based company champions both solar power and pumped storage at former anthracite coal mines and limestone quarries as part of its proposed $2 billion “Susquehanna Microgrid” of charging stations for electric trucks that would serve Pennsylvania’s many warehouses.

The York proposal “isn’t quite the Three Gorges Dam,” the world’s largest hydropower complex, which delivers 22,000 megawatts to central China, “but it is a decent amount of power, [and] a major undertaking,” said Matthew Taylor, a partner at Cerity Partners in Conshohocken who has worked on a series of energy development projects.

“Pumped storage has many positive environmental attributes,” but also tends to raise neighbors’ concern over changes to land and waterways, and can take years to win regulators’ approval, Taylor added.