The Snowy Hydro, in
Australia, a pumped hydro
scheme (water pumped
uphill, that will spin a turbine
to generate electricity
when gravity is later allowed
to pull the water back down).
Snowy 2.0 is an
environmentally
damaging, inefficient,
unnecessary and
polluting project,
that's very expensive,
yet offers few benefits.
Snowy 2.0 is the largest,
most destructive project
ever proposed in an
Australian national park.
Those charged with protecting
Australia’s favorite National Park,
Kosciuszko, are more concerned
about the destruction of a pristine
alpine environment than by
the crazy physics of the project.
They plan to use
3 MWh of wind power
to pump water through
27 kilometers of tunnels,
over an elevation
of 900 meters.
When consumers need
electric power, and the
the wind is not blowing,
Snowy Hydro could
return 2 MWh to the grid.
Squandering up to 1/3
of the electricity
originally generated.
The cost of
the wind power
involved exceeds
$110 per MWh.
The owners
of Snowy 2.0
will charge
an additional
$150-300 per MWh
to deliver hydro
power to the grid.
The power used to pump
the water uphill will mainly
come from coal-fired power
plants, delivered overnight
when it’s cheapest.
In 2017 Malcolm Turnbull,
the prime minister at the time,
responded to Snowy Hydro’s
pitch for the Snowy 2.0 project
by announcing this was an
“electricity game changer”.
All it needed was a new tunnel
and underground power station
between two existing reservoirs,
costing $2bn and taking four years
to construct.
The project would deliver
massive storage to counter
the intermittency of renewable
power, and it would be
constructed underground.
The National Parks
Association of NSW,
along with a group
of environmental, energy
and economic experts,
have studied the claims:
Far from having
a negligible impact
on Kosciuszko
National Park,
Snowy 2.0 would :
-- Demolish hundreds
of hectares of threatened
species habitat;
-- Drive the stocky
galaxias, a native fish,
into extinction;
-- Spread the declared
noxious pest redfin perch
and the virulent EHN virus
throughout the headwaters
of major river catchments
(Murrumbidgee,
Snowy and Murray).
-- Depress groundwater
and stream flows
above the tunnel;
-- Dump 20 million tonnes
of excavated soil, contaminated
with asbestos and acid-forming
rock, into Kosciuszko
National Park.
The amount of energy storage
provided by Snowy 2.0
isn’t even needed until 2030.
There is already significant
capacity with the Tumut 3
pumped storage station,
which has barely run
since it was constructed
a half-century ago.
This untapped capacity
should be used first.
Snowy 2.0 would draw
most of its pumping energy
from coal-fired power stations
while they remain in the system.
More than 50 million tonnes
of greenhouse gases from
its construction and
first decade of operation.
The best location for energy
storage is at the point
of generation, or as close
as possible to consumers.
That's why most renewable
projects use on-site batteries.
The world is turning away
from pumped hydro,
and toward batteries.
Snowy 2.0
is not efficient,
losing about 40%
of the energy
initially created
by the wind.
The inefficiency is from
water friction losses along
the 27 kilometer tunnel
between reservoirs,
the longest in the world,
and the high transmission
losses because of its
long distance from the
source wind generators,
and from the electricity
consumers.
BATTERY ALTERNATIVE ?
A giant lithium-ion battery,
sold to Australia
by Elon Musk for $150 million,
is capable of backing up
all of Australia’s
renewable energy power
... for four minutes.
Grid-scale battery
storage is a ‘myth’.
The capacity of
the few batteries
that have been
installed next to
wind or solar
projects, is trivial.