Economic assessment of the construction of hydroelectric power plant (pumped-storage) in Iranian reservoir dams: case study of Pirtaghi damandpower plant

Nowadays, the optimal and cost effective design and operation in power industry has always been of interest and in development and operation of the power industry, economic distribution of the load among fossil fuel power plants and minimizing operation cost are considered among main goals. One of the issues considered in load economic distribution is coordination between plants. Pump – storage power plants are of the type of hydroelectric power plants with motor function transfer energy from low-consumption hours to high-consumption hours. As a result, unusable and produced electric power surplus in off-peak hours is converted to potential energy.
This study has economically examined the construction of pumped-storage power plant next to the Pir-Taghi reservoir dam using the measures of engineering economics in 2014.Forthispurpose, the four scenarios of reservoir capacity of 1.5,2, 3and4million cubic meters were used. Results indicated that the best case is the reservoir capacity of 3million cubic meters. The value of net present value of the project has varied in various cases from the minimum of 2217 billion Rials in the case of 1.5 million cubic meters up to 3750 billion Rials in the case of 3 million cubic meters.The value of this index is a proper criterion for selecting the preferred case among economic options. The values of finished expenseper kilowhat of generated electricity vary from a minimum of 4248 Rials in the case of 2 million cubic meters up to 4302 Rials in the case of 4 million cubic meters.
In addition, the results of sensitivity analysis of the economic parameters to changes in the interest rate show that although by increasing interest rate the value of economic parameters is decreased, but the reservoir capacity of 3 million cubic meters has still economic justification. The results of sensitivity analysis of the economic parameters to the cost of the environment pollutants indicate that the elimination of the costs of the environment pollutants or increase them by 50% and 100% in each of the sites will not have a significant impact on their economic indicators.