This study innovatively combines a set of methods to assess the economic potential of pumped hydro energy storage. It first provides a method based on geographic information systems to study the potential of pumped-hydro for different topologies. Second, using cost estimates for each identified site, cost-potential curves are derived. Finally, these curves are used for planning a fully renewable system to assess their impact on investment recommendations. Applications to Chile, Peru, and Bolivia show the usability of the methods. Over 450 pumped-hydro locations are identified, totaling around 20 TWh (or 1600 GW of installed capacity with 12 h of storage). These numbers exceed by 20-fold the projected daily energy demand of the corresponding countries. When taking into account investment costs, most locations are cheaper than current Li-ion batteries, but only some are expected to remain competitive in the future. When using the resulting cost-potential curves to design a future energy system, the planning tool recommends about 1.6 and 5.0 times more pumped-hydro storage compared to using average values and literature values, respectively. These differences underline the significance of the found cost curves.

这项研究创新地结合了一套方法来评估抽水蓄能的经济潜力。它首先提供了一种基于地理信息系统的方法来研究不同拓扑结构下抽水蓄能的潜力。其次，使用每个确定站点的成本估算，得出成本-潜力曲线。最后，这些曲线用于规划一个完全可再生的系统，以评估它们对投资建议的影响。智利、秘鲁和玻利维亚的应用表明了这些方法的可用性。确定了 450 多个抽水蓄能地点，总计约 20 TWh（或 1600 GW 的装机容量，12 小时的存储容量）。这些数字比相应国家预计的每日能源需求高出 20 倍。在考虑投资成本时，大多数地方都比目前的锂离子电池便宜，但只有一些地方有望在未来保持竞争力。当使用由此产生的成本潜力曲线来设计未来的能源系统时，与使用平均值和文献值相比，规划工具建议的抽水蓄能分别增加约 1.6 倍和 5.0 倍。这些差异强调了所发现的成本曲线的重要性。