Pumped Hydro: Australia's energy future?

from above tumor three power station in snowy mountains of New South Wales all looks tranquil but inside area manager guy Boardman is gearing up for a big day as the mercury climbs air conditioners cranked up along the eastern seaboard this old workhorse is boring into life so we're inside the power station now and apart from the noise the whole place is vibrating it's a little disconcerting you can feel it whatever you touch that's because it's a hot day in Sydney so there's a lot of demand for electricity and all six of these turbines are spinning this only happens a handful of days every year enough water is now passing through these pipes to fill an olympic-sized swimming pool every two seconds electricity generated about 1500 megawatts would power close to 300,000 homes on an average day significantly fewer when demand is high like today crucially the power it provides helps stabilize the grid we store our energy in the form of water up in detail bingo down when the grid really needs that energy and it's electricity is a commodity price is dependent on the demand we start the generators up and we supply the the grid with that extra energy that it needs but what makes this plant unique is what happens when demand for electricity is low during mild weather or at night when the demand is not there and with the coal-fired power stations are our baseline base load generators are still there humming away and they've got this spare capacity prices lower we can actually then capture that energy source which is the water that we've captured here in gen'l'men you send it back up the hill store it back up there is potential energy ready to go yen pumped hydro it's not new technology in fact the basic design of this plant hasn't changed since it was built in 1973 what are gushes from the dam to supply the whole of the southwest of New South Wales are is produced here in the t-one hydroelectric station in today's age of high-tech renewables it's worth noting this plant has been recharging its energy source water for almost 50 years by pumping it back up the hill when electricity is cheap in a way we are operating as a big battery but the the key point to note there is that we actually need to use electricity to drive the pumps to get the water back up the hill so that we can reuse it to generate the electric currently the pumping phase at tumor 3 is powered by coal but in future large-scale wind and solar could also be used here and elsewhere and that's why this form of energy storage has caught the prime minister's our energy storage long-neglected in australia will also be a priority this year the Prime Minister is now talking about Pumped hydro storage he's the first Prime Minister to raise that storages is absolutely essential in the midst of an ideological battleground over Australia's energy future there is near consensus on the need for investment in infrastructure that can store the intermittent energy that's rapidly coming online there is no doubt we are transitioning to a cleaner energy future the solar and wind is the cheapest source of new capacity you can build those forces are in train but they can't produce when the Sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing so you need another resource to make demand most of the focus has been fixed on large-scale and household batteries where the rapid advance of technology is bringing down the price but the Prime Minister also singled out Pumped hydro and has already indicated taxpayer dollars will help fund it it will get more value out of existing base load generation and it will enhance grid stability and we're going to get on with it Australia has a challenge of dealing with fundamental transition in the energy system a key issue is storage to complement intermittent renewable energy supply pumped hydro has the potential to offer part of that solution and therefore it is almost certainly a solution worth putting some serious money into professor Ross Garneau wrote Kevin Rudd's climate change review in 2008 now he's one of the chief proponents of Pumped hydro pub hydro is going to be a very important part of the solutions to grid stability when you've got a high proportion of energy coming from solar and wind he points to North America Europe and China where huge capital investments are flowing in to punt hydro in the last five year plan China put in 30 gigawatts of pumped hydro storage well that's roughly the capacity of the whole Australian national electricity market the difference in a dry continent like Australia is that water is somewhat rare commodity one of the possibilities is to use saltwater the ocean is the lower dam where you've got large potential catchment areas on high hills or escapements or cliffs above the water quite a number of sites in Australia where that looks very promising and studies are being undertaken on those scarcity of water though is not the only challenge the real challenge is can you make this work economically can you find places where there is sufficient height between the source of the water the lower dam if you like or the lower water source and the top dam to make it worth doing secondly is that site close enough to a form of renewable energy and then thirdly is this facility near enough to transmission lines so that when you then want to transmit the electricity to the places where you need it that you can do so efficiently Malcolm Turnbull says Australia's energy future must be built around three things affordable reliable power with low carbon emissions now planned like this can achieve all three but anything on this scale requires a huge capital investment in today's fears I couldn't even contemplate the financial cost of undertaking something just like tell bingo dam and timber three Power Station that it would be quite mind-boggling could you build a pump hydro system like this on a much smaller scale yes certainly you could certainly build it on a smaller scale but obviously the output of the Power Station is directly in direct relation to the water supply that's feeding it so you don't get the pressure yes you don't get a solid aim less power less energy I don't think the economics stacks up for now without government subsidies there's little interest from the private sector there may well be privately some entities looking at it I would be terribly surprised if serious money is going anywhere close to it at the moment this requires a great deal of planning and capital and those are two things which are scarce at the moment professor Gallo believes the growing political pressures to stabilize the system will force the economics into shape the economic case has been made by the growing volatility of power prices recently the market will respond to that the works being done now the question for the government how much is it worth to keep the lights on but the challenge is so great and the need for economic deliverable storage is so great that we have to put significant resources into it now it's easy to scoff at pump hydro but it's equally easy to say is going to be perfect now I think neither is probably true but until we actually put some real focused effort into it then we won't know and we need to know

Channel: Lethal Heating

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Id: BRhvXBXRKjY

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017