Yards Creek Generating Station


Yards Creek Generating Station is pumped-storage hydroelectric plant in Blairstown and Hardwick Township in Warren County, New Jersey.
The facility is jointly owned by subsidiaries of Public Service Enterprise Group and FirstEnergy. It has an installed capacity of 420 MW.

Location

The facility is located in the Delaware Water Gap region of the New Jersey Skylands.
When built the complex stretched into the former township of Pahaquarry. Pahaquarry got its name from the word Pahaquarra, which was a derivation of the Native American word Pahaqualong, which meant "the place between the mountains beside the waters". The township dissolved in 1997, becoming part of Hardwick Township

Operations

Commercial operation began in 1965 and the power station was upgraded in the 1990s. Yards Creek consists of two reservoirs created by earth-fill embankment dams. The upper and lower reservoirs are separated by an elevation of. Water is conveyed between the plant and the Upper Reservoir via an 18’ diameter 1,800’ long exposed steel pipe. At full station load, approximately 4 million gpm of water is released 5,800 MGD, Velocity: 35 ft/sec, or 24 mph. The full upper reservoir will
last 5.7 hours at Hydraulic Turbine nameplate capacity. The storage facility provides energy regulation and spinning reserve during on-peak hours, and it provides an energy sink off-peak to allow fossil and nuclear plants to remain more fully loaded.