Snowy hydro what a farce.

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Originally Posted by bee utey

Nothing farcical about pumped hydro energy storage, it's been done all over the world including Australia. Cheap off peak power is used to pump up water when it's available and when peak demand occurs the hydro system can do it's bit to keep the lights on. The water isn't wasted, it's recycled. Instead of just using coal fired off peak power, systems like that can now use intermittent power like solar and wind.

The costs of expanding the Snowy scheme might be too high compared to other forms of storage though. Previous attempts to upgrade it have all been shelved because of that, no reason to believe a new study will show any different.

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Well said Jilden.

It has been done for over 50 years in the US.

The voting public can kinda understand it.

Most of the infrastructure is there.

Even the rednecks can't deny it is a way of having a battery for intermittent wind or solar.

20% loss is really irrelevant.

DL

The other way to get the water back to the top reservoirs is to wait until summer when the earth's tilt has changed so that what was uphill becomes downhill and the water runs the other way.

[bigsmile1]

Hall you're sums are wrong. I heard an engineer interviewed when this was announced he e said that the nett power loss would be about 20%. This means that the power to pump the water back up will be 20% of the total power produced...... by my reckoning that means a nett gain in powere generation of 80% over the cost of production.
Makes perfect sense to me.

Noting that if we went to battery storage of the same capacity as the pump up systems, they would have to be charged somehow - exactly the same way as the water is pumped up hill - excess power generated.

Noting these systems work particularly well when dedicated wind power or solar power is used to power the water pumps or charge the batteries.

Yes, if solar and wind could be used to charge batteries to power the pumps to send the water back as required then the whole system could be basically self-supporting.
I like the idea of expanding the Snowy, but of course it will only benefit NSW and Victoria, who are part-owners with the Federal Government. Other states and territories won't gain from it. So SA still needs it's own solutions as the Wetherill government has proposed, Queensland will use it's own gas plus it leads on solar, WA and the NT are on their own, Tassie has hydro plus some power from Victoria.

Anyone see the utopia on this? 😅

Whilst it has been going for 44 years in Tumut 3, the announcement was just hot air. The snowies are 58% owned by NSW, 29% Victoria and only 13% the Feds. Turnbull's "funding" promise was not from his government as they are only a minor shareholder. From what I've read the "costings" don't include transmission lines or allow for the extra time that would be needed to allow for the initial catchment of extra water for the scheme. The policy will likely quietly disappear until the next time a newspoll is due.

Tom.

About $4 billion including transmission upgrades. Needs a major environmental study. Would take 5-7 years to build so it wouldn't replace Hazelwood next week.