In Turkey and the world, utilization of renewable energy sources is gaining importance in order to procure sustainable development along with the increase in energy demand and decrease in petroleum based energy sources. The most important renewable energy resources include hydroelectric, solar, wave and wind energies. Hydroelectric energy provides a safe and clean power supply to Turkey with positive effects on environment and climate, less cost in operation and maintenance, being long-lasting and domestic nature. Especially hydroelectric production of all renewable energy resources in Turkey is becoming increasingly significant in total electricity production in that it has reached 16.1% in 2015 while it was only 3.8% in 1950. Small scale hydroelectric power plants are favored among clean energy resources since they are easily established, mostly sustainable and cheaper to operate. Pumped Hydropower Storage (PHS) systems have become common recently since they store energy in the form of water in an upper reservoir, pumped from another reservoir at a lower elevation. During periods of high electricity demand, power is generated by releasing the stored water through turbines in the same manner as a conventional hydropower station. On the other hand, during periods of low demand (usually nights or weekends when electricity is also lower cost), the upper reservoir is recharged by using lower-cost electricity from the grid to pump the water back to the upper reservoir. Furthermore, they can be operated every hour of the day when interconnected with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar to obtain maximum efficiency. In reality PHS's do not provide means to produce net gain in electricity but they are economically viable due to new pricing policies and can balance the load in the grid. In this study, general status of energy and hydropower of Turkey is investigated, and a proposal for a pumped hydropower storage in the Western Black Sea Region of Turkey is presented.
