Staff Photo by John Rawlston
Nickajack Cove is seen from Sand Mountain. Some Georgia lawmakers are attempting to move the state line north by a little over a mile, which would be the midpoint of the Tennessee River at this location. An energy development company that is developing plans for pumped storage hydroelectric facilities in Pennsylvania and Virginia is proposing to build a similar 80-megawatt plant in Dade County, Georgia, near the Nickajack Reservoir.
Renewable Energy Aggregators, a Doylestown, Pennsylvania-based company started five years ago to develop renewable energy projects, has filed for a preliminary permit application to pursue plans to build an 84-acre lake atop one of the mountaintop ridges in Dade County near where Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee meet.
The proposed Freestone Pumped Storage Hydro Project would be a smaller version of TVA’s Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage facility just west of Chattanooga nearly 20 miles upstream on the Tennessee River.
But unlike Raccoon Mountain, which drains into the river below, the developers of the Dade County project envision a closed-loop facility that would involve construction of a 31.4-acre lower reservoir where water would drain into from the upper reservoir to produce electricity by a pair of hydro generating units during peak demand periods. Similar to other projects Renewable Energy Aggregators is developing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Buchanan County, Virginia, the Dade County project could use an abandoned coal mine for part of the facility.
Pumped storage facilities work like a giant storage battery. Water is pumped from a lower reservoir to one uphill at night or during periods of surplus electricity generation, when power prices typically drop. During peak demand periods, usually in morning or afternoon hours when prices rise, gates open to send the water back downhill to the lower reservoir, engaging turbines to create energy.