Yards Creek Generating Station

Yards Creek Generating Station is a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant in Blairstown and Hardwick Township in Warren County, New Jersey, United States. The facility is owned by REV Renewables, which purchased it from Public Service Enterprise Group and FirstEnergy in 2020 and 2021. 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 Pahaquarry Township. 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 700 ft. Water is conveyed between the plant and the Upper Reservoir via an 18 ft diameter, 1800 ft long exposed steel pipe. At full station load, approximately 4 million gpm of water is released (9000 cfs) 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 (from 11 P.M. to 7 A.M.) to allow fossil and nuclear plants to remain more fully loaded.