
592 Principles of Sustainable Energy Systems
© 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
outage for nuclear power plants near the North Sea and to provide inexpensive peak power.
It has operated successfully for three decades primarily as a peak shaving unit and to sup-
plement hydroelectric storage facilities on the system. Availability and starting reliability
for this unit are reported as 90% and 99%, respectively. The plant can provide up to 3 h of
storage and has recently been used to help balance the rapidly growing wind output from
North Germany [7,8]. The underground portion of the plant consists of two salt caverns
(310,000 m
3
total) designed to ...