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In order to maintain greater control over the country's water resources and reduce the vulnerability of the Brazilian electricity sector, this paper presents a review of the Seasonal-Pumped-Storage (SPS) potential in Brazil, its benefits and the different ways in which SPS can be integrated with hydroelectric dams in cascade downstream. In addition to increasing the Brazilian energy storage potential, SPS has the potential to: regulate river flows allowing the control of hydropower generation; reduce the spillage and increase power generation in the hydroelectric dams in cascade; turn the construction of new dams more viable where there is no suitable geology for the construction of conventional storage reservoirs; control floods when the geology does not permit the construction of storage reservoirs; decrease the evaporation of accumulation reservoirs; store the electricity generated from intermittent renewable sources; store energy for peak generation; reduce transmission bottlenecks; decrease the cost of electricity transmission from hydroelectric plants in the Amazon; decentralize the energy storage capacity in Brazil to increase energy security and to reduce the risk of electricity rationing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new frontier for hydropower electricity generation in Brazil, the Amazon region, cannot be used for energy storage as the construction of storage reservoirs would have deep environmental and social impacts, thus run-of-the-river dams have been built instead. If Brazil still wants to generate 80% of its electricity from hydropower, there is the need to increase the country's energy storage capacity so that the excess generation coming from the dams in the Amazon region during the wet period can be used during the dry period. This article presents four ways to increase the storage capacity of a watershed. The most innovative alternative involves a large-scale pumped-storage site combined with a series of hydropower dams in cascade, which could store energy by pumping water to a new reservoir during the wet period and generate energy by releasing the stored water during the dry period. Even though pumped storage schemes have an average efficiency of around 75%, it has been calculated that the combination of a pumped storage site and a series of hydroelectric dams in cascade can increase the overall storage efficiency up to 90% and double the storage capacity of a watershed. This scheme was called EPS (Enhanced-Pumped-Storage). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]