Despite promises of being one of the world’s largest batteries for only $2 billion dollars, Snowy 2.0 is shaping up to cost over $10 billion and only supply a fraction of promised capacity.
Transcript
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak about the Auditor-General’s performance audit titled, No. 33—Performance audit—Snowy 2.0 governance of early implementation: Snowy Hydro Limited.
Some background for those who may be new to this project: Snowy 2.0 is an extension of the Snowy Hydro project, hence the name. In 2017, Prime Minister Turnbull announced the cost of Snowy 2.0 as $2 billion. This report states that the cost is now $5.1 billion plus billions of other costs, totalling well over $10 billion. The completion date is out to 2025, so we can expect further cost blowouts. The project involves using electricity from unreliable sources like wind and solar to pump water from a lower reservoir, Talbingo Dam, through underground pipes to an upper reservoir, Tantangara Dam. Water is then sent back down to Talbingo Dam, generating electricity on the way. Snowy 2.0 is referred to as a ‘big battery’ because water is stored in the top reservoir until it is needed. The same turbine is either pumping water uphill or generating electricity from the water coming down. The total pipe length is 27 kilometres. Generally, water is pumped up during the day—provided the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. The water is then released down the pipe to generate electricity in the evening peak, when it’s most needed. As the sun does not shine and wind goes quiet at night, pumping water back up the hill overnight, ready for the morning peak, will need coal power. The upper reservoir may hold multiple days worth of water and, at some point, the dam must be refilled, especially as Tantangara Dam is currently only 17 per cent full.
Pumped hydro only works when the dam has water in it. For every megawatt of power generated by water coming down the hill, the turbine needs 1.3 megawatts of power to get the water back up, because of losses. In total, 30 per cent more coal is used in Snowy 2.0. Pumped hydro, put simply, entails generating electricity 2.3 times to be used by consumers once. This is not cheap electricity; it’s actually really expensive electricity. The solar and wind fairy tale needs pumped hydro as a way of storing unreliable wind and power generation, which occurs mostly during the day, and moving that capacity to the evening peek, when unreliable solar and wind can’t provide baseload power.
Maximum generation for Snowy 2.0 is an impressive 2,000 megawatts, but here’s the catch: annual generation is listed in this report as 350,000 megawatt hours. Running at full capacity, Snowy 2.0 will generate electricity for only 175 hours a year. To put that into perspective, my home state of Queensland used 68 million megawatt hours last year. Snowy Hydro will contribute the equivalent of half of one per cent of Queensland’s power each year, one-tenth of one per cent of Australia’s annual generation, at a cost of $5 billion and rising—and that doesn’t include all the costs. This madness will send us broke. There’s a far better way: a 2,000-megawatt coal-fired power station is able to run at 2,000 megawatts 98 per cent of the time, 24/7. Liddell in the Hunter Valley generated nine million megawatts last year.
For less than the cost of this green fairy tale called Snowy 2.0, a coal plant can produce at least 25 times the amount of electricity. That’s why Germany’s Greens coalition government is turning Germany’s coal-fired power stations back on. Shutting ours down when we see what’s happening in the rest of the world is criminal irresponsibility. Prime Minister Albanese is promising reduced electricity prices while at the same time building horribly expensive power generation. The Prime Minister’s agenda will fail, and he will take Australia down with him. Instead, One Nation will build baseload power stations, reduce the cost of electricity, restore grid reliability, restore grid stability, restore Australian manufacturing and restore the income of working Australians.
Malcolm, another stupidity which must be called out is the reckless claims about batteries.
The situation is similar, if not worse, with claims of 200MW batteries and the idea that somehow with 10 of them we will equal a coal fired power station. This is a complete lie as the 200MW refers to the MWhr capacity. So the 10 batteries will contain 2000MWhr of power, or equivalent to only one hours operation per day of the coal fired station. No replacement at all!
But it gets worse as the batteries cost is many times what the coal station would be, and must be charged. If the sun is not shining or wind not blowing this does not take place. And there are long periods several times a year where there is very low generation. So, little generation, dead batteries – where is the power coming from?
And still worse, charging and discharging causes a 10% loss of power. And performance drops such that by 10 years later one has to completely replace the battery. Meantime the coal fired station can run for 50 years.
Its time to end the ridiculous renewables fantasies being peddled by the idiotic. The whole system does not work!!!! And costs are astronomical. This is just a bad way to destroy our country.
It does not need to be an Einstein to figure out even if you hypothetically covered the whole country with solar panels & wind mills , you will not generate more than 10 % of the energy needs . Renewable energies are an unobtainium , a dream , simply because they are very unpredictable, elements dependants ( sun & winds are not fix predictable parameters ! ) the story of the batteries is another load of BS pushed by the socialo-communist left !!!! Here to it is an unobtainium, because first batteries store DC energy & the grid uses AC , so it has to be converted somewhere on the track & the conversion , no matter how efficient it is is never 100% , a lot of losses are induced ( heat , ohmique losses , etc ) . Also , batteries have a life expectancy ( around 5 to 8 % loss of performance every year for electric cars ) The only way to produce abound ant ( & non pollutant ) energy is NUCLEAR!! Australia got the most abundant source of Uranium , but we selll it abroad & totally refuse to use it ourselves ! Why ? Mainly by mass generated fear after accident like 3 miles island on the US , Chernobyl in the USSR & more recently Fukushima in Japan . All those accidents happened with very early types & often badly constructed plants , but modern one are far better built & also safer simply , like for aircrafts , we did learn from the past ( just look at France , a country slightly bigger than NSW & they got more than 25
installed to date with no
problems at all ! )
The Snowy Mountains Hydro Electricity Authority (SMHEA) provided useful water conservation and some hydro electricity and similar projects might be worthwhile on the flood prone coastal rivers of northern New South Wales and Queensland. However the majority of Australians have been seduced into believing that the total replacement of coal-fired powerhouses by windmills, solar panels, pumping water uphill, mega batteries and yet-to-be-invented hydrogen engines will be significantly cheaper than past methods. Nuclear powerhouses are scornfully dismissed. Must we wait until Australia no longer has an affordable 24/7 electricity grid before the gullible herd realizes that it has been conned by experts.