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They can be hugely political. Snowy 2.0 has tripled in price and has been a political weapon between coal, gas and renewable energy investment. It has pretty to

by ggm 2y ago

They can be hugely political. Snowy 2.0 has tripled in price and has been a political weapon between coal, gas and renewable energy investment. It has pretty torrid engineering troubles with tunnel boring. It will be late coming onstream. Some argue the money could be better spent on renewable, batteries and poles and wires. The Queensland proposal at Kidston has become a pawn between two parties and probably won't go ahead as large, if at all. Queensland's existing PHES was operated by the coal generator to earn it money in coal, not to reduce pricing in bids by undercutting. The government had to structurally separate it out to get better bidding outcomes noting that it co-owns the coal power station concerned and liked the revenue side as it is. Pumped hydro can be very useful in "black start" events.

beachy 2y ago
Political is right. In NZ, the Onslow pumped hydro scheme was just cancelled by the incoming right wing-ish government, with no comprehensible rationale given [0] > “On top of its $16 billion price tag, the Lake Onslow scheme would run into likely issues with consenting and it wouldn’t be delivered for at least another decade. It will cost a lot and take a while. Duh. Show me the numbers. And govt can modify the consenting regime. > “Industry experts warned that if the scheme went ahead it would have a chilling effect on the pipeline of renewable electricity generation New Zealand needs to reach our climate goals. Please explain how something that can store renewable electricity has a chilling effect on renewables. [0] https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/lake-onslow-pumped-hydro-scheme-scrapped https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/lake-onslow-pumped-hydro...
- ggm 2y ago
  By under bidding its energy against renewables, earned from gas and coal? I don't entirely understand it either but the same reasoning is used by green opposition to snow2.0 to argue against it, a product of the turnbull LNP era government. Damage to the national park during construction is the icing on the cake.
- zizee 2y ago
  The Onslow pumped hydro scheme is estimated to store 4,000 – 11,000 GWh, with an estimated cost of $16 billion NZD (9.7 billion USD), and be delivered in (at least) 10 years time. Is that a cost of $881-2450 USD per kwhr? I presume there is ample room for cost blowouts as well. LiPo cells are currently costing about $110 to 130/kWh (USD), and trending downwards. Now large scale storage batteries are more than just the cells (Tesla megapacks are selling for 1.39M for 3.916 MW or about $410/kwhr), and cells probably wear out quicker than a dam, but it seems the Onslow scheme is not giving great bang for buck. The best you could say for it is that a lot of the spend would stay in NZ because a lot of the spend is in labour. Am I missing something? Is my math wrong? It seems to me spending 16 billion becoming experts in assembling large scale batteries would be a better long term investment for NZ. And they can get access to the storage as it is build, instead of waiting 10 years. https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/28349-identifying-potential-sites-for-large-scale-pumped-hydroelectric-energy-storage-phes-in-new-zealand-september-2021 https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/28349-identifying-poten... https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/03/06/battery-prices-collapsing-grid-tied-energy-storage-expanding/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/03/06/battery-prices-collap... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    Your math is off by three orders of magnitude. The scale of the Onslow pumped hydro scheme is in billions of kWh, not in millions of kWh.
    - chickenbig 2y ago
      https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/business/about/our-research/research-institutes-and-centres/energy-centre/summerschool/2021presentations/day2-m-taylor.pdf https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/business/about/our-researc... Indeed the above puts it as having 8TWh storage capacity (and perhaps 1.2GW power). Longer duration storage, with low cost to hold the energy (which hopefully does not evaporate too much during the bountiful times).
    - zizee 2y ago
      Thanks for the correction. So this pumped hydro storage is at least 200x cheaper per kWh than current LiPo based solutions.
- robbiep 2y ago
  Meanwhile your neighbours over here created a political foil in the shape of nuclear reactors and are coming in swinging for a presumptive election this year saying that is the way forward
- slyall 2y ago
  The incoming government didn't cancel the scheme. They cancelled the investigation into the scheme which was due to report in late-2024 (I think). The investigation would have covered other options as well. They didn't save billions, they save a million and threw away the work done
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
There's definitely politics involved, but also the prices of solar, wind and batteries are and have been steadily falling. One mental blindspot when comparing storage is to assume you need X amount of stored energy, but of course no-one wants stored energy, they just want energy. Storing it only makes sense if you can't generate it for less so you need to compare against a portfolio of generation and short term storage. If you can't beat that on economics then you're useless, even if no other tech can beat you at your specific task of long duration storage.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  Most pumped hydro is short-ish term storage and at full capacity runs from full to empty within 10-20 hours. And in a new development there's nothing really stopping you from putting in more pipes and generators so you can get the full energy out in half the time if that makes more economic sense. Conceptually they are like batteries, just with the ability to scale max discharge rate and max capacity somewhat independently, a much lower cost per MWh stored, but high engineering complexity because each site needs a bespoke solution. Of course there are some projects that just go for huge storage and few generators. Sometimes they serve another purpose and just have generators as a side benefit. And sometimes they don't make a lot of sense and seem to just be built that way to be more impressive
- energy123 2y ago
  At least as of a year ago, pumped hydro was cost competitive with lithium ion batteries and filled the 10 hour niche. The other benefits are longer lifespan and domestic construction. Lithium ion batteries filled the sub-10 hour niche. But lithium ion battery costs will keep falling and pumped hydro costs won't fall or will increase alongside rising labour costs and gutted state capacity. So there could be a crossover point if it hasn't already happened.
  - AndrewDavis 2y ago
    > But lithium ion battery costs will keep falling I question whether increased demand for grid scale batteries will create so much demand that lithium won't drop significantly any time soon. I certainly hope i'm wrong.
femto 2y ago
One worth mentioning in this context is the Western Sydney Pumped Hydro Project. It sounds like a no-brainer. It uses the existing Lake Burragorang (formed by Warragamba Dam) and an existing hole with infrastructure at the old Wollondilly Coal Washery, 400m above the lake and 3.1km from it. It will offer 8GWh of storage, close to Sydney, basically for the effort of digging a 3.5km tunnel and installing turbines. https://www.waternsw.com.au/water-services/renewable-energy-and-storage-program/Western-Sydney-Pumped-Hydro-Project https://www.waternsw.com.au/water-services/renewable-energy-... To their credit, Sydney Water has a range of projects based on adding pumped hydro to exiting dams, of which the above is one. Total storage capacity of projects announced to date is 25GWh. They seem ideal for firming rooftop solar around Sydney/Newcastle/Wollongong. https://www.waternsw.com.au/water-services/renewable-energy-and-storage-program https://www.waternsw.com.au/water-services/renewable-energy-...
- robbiep 2y ago
  The western sydney project is a no brainer. It’s being independently financed and run I think? Some mac banker saw and opportunity and ran with it

by ggm 2y ago

beachy 2y ago

Political is right. In NZ, the Onslow pumped hydro scheme was just cancelled by the incoming right wing-ish government, with no comprehensible rationale given [0] > “On top of its $16 billion price tag, the Lake Onslow scheme would run into likely issues with consenting and it wouldn’t be delivered for at least another decade. It will cost a lot and take a while. Duh. Show me the numbers. And govt can modify the consenting regime. > “Industry experts warned that if the scheme went ahead it would have a chilling effect on the pipeline of renewable electricity generation New Zealand needs to reach our climate goals. Please explain how something that can store renewable electricity has a chilling effect on renewables. [0] https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/lake-onslow-pumped-hydro-scheme-scrapped https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/lake-onslow-pumped-hydro...

ggm 2y ago
By under bidding its energy against renewables, earned from gas and coal? I don't entirely understand it either but the same reasoning is used by green opposition to snow2.0 to argue against it, a product of the turnbull LNP era government. Damage to the national park during construction is the icing on the cake.
zizee 2y ago
The Onslow pumped hydro scheme is estimated to store 4,000 – 11,000 GWh, with an estimated cost of $16 billion NZD (9.7 billion USD), and be delivered in (at least) 10 years time. Is that a cost of $881-2450 USD per kwhr? I presume there is ample room for cost blowouts as well. LiPo cells are currently costing about $110 to 130/kWh (USD), and trending downwards. Now large scale storage batteries are more than just the cells (Tesla megapacks are selling for 1.39M for 3.916 MW or about $410/kwhr), and cells probably wear out quicker than a dam, but it seems the Onslow scheme is not giving great bang for buck. The best you could say for it is that a lot of the spend would stay in NZ because a lot of the spend is in labour. Am I missing something? Is my math wrong? It seems to me spending 16 billion becoming experts in assembling large scale batteries would be a better long term investment for NZ. And they can get access to the storage as it is build, instead of waiting 10 years. https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/28349-identifying-potential-sites-for-large-scale-pumped-hydroelectric-energy-storage-phes-in-new-zealand-september-2021 https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/28349-identifying-poten... https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/03/06/battery-prices-collapsing-grid-tied-energy-storage-expanding/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/03/06/battery-prices-collap... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack
- jltsiren 2y ago
  Your math is off by three orders of magnitude. The scale of the Onslow pumped hydro scheme is in billions of kWh, not in millions of kWh.
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/business/about/our-research/research-institutes-and-centres/energy-centre/summerschool/2021presentations/day2-m-taylor.pdf https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/business/about/our-researc... Indeed the above puts it as having 8TWh storage capacity (and perhaps 1.2GW power). Longer duration storage, with low cost to hold the energy (which hopefully does not evaporate too much during the bountiful times).
  - zizee 2y ago
    Thanks for the correction. So this pumped hydro storage is at least 200x cheaper per kWh than current LiPo based solutions.
robbiep 2y ago
Meanwhile your neighbours over here created a political foil in the shape of nuclear reactors and are coming in swinging for a presumptive election this year saying that is the way forward
slyall 2y ago
The incoming government didn't cancel the scheme. They cancelled the investigation into the scheme which was due to report in late-2024 (I think). The investigation would have covered other options as well. They didn't save billions, they save a million and threw away the work done

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

There's definitely politics involved, but also the prices of solar, wind and batteries are and have been steadily falling. One mental blindspot when comparing storage is to assume you need X amount of stored energy, but of course no-one wants stored energy, they just want energy. Storing it only makes sense if you can't generate it for less so you need to compare against a portfolio of generation and short term storage. If you can't beat that on economics then you're useless, even if no other tech can beat you at your specific task of long duration storage.

wongarsu 2y ago
Most pumped hydro is short-ish term storage and at full capacity runs from full to empty within 10-20 hours. And in a new development there's nothing really stopping you from putting in more pipes and generators so you can get the full energy out in half the time if that makes more economic sense. Conceptually they are like batteries, just with the ability to scale max discharge rate and max capacity somewhat independently, a much lower cost per MWh stored, but high engineering complexity because each site needs a bespoke solution. Of course there are some projects that just go for huge storage and few generators. Sometimes they serve another purpose and just have generators as a side benefit. And sometimes they don't make a lot of sense and seem to just be built that way to be more impressive
energy123 2y ago
At least as of a year ago, pumped hydro was cost competitive with lithium ion batteries and filled the 10 hour niche. The other benefits are longer lifespan and domestic construction. Lithium ion batteries filled the sub-10 hour niche. But lithium ion battery costs will keep falling and pumped hydro costs won't fall or will increase alongside rising labour costs and gutted state capacity. So there could be a crossover point if it hasn't already happened.
- AndrewDavis 2y ago
  > But lithium ion battery costs will keep falling I question whether increased demand for grid scale batteries will create so much demand that lithium won't drop significantly any time soon. I certainly hope i'm wrong.

femto 2y ago

One worth mentioning in this context is the Western Sydney Pumped Hydro Project. It sounds like a no-brainer. It uses the existing Lake Burragorang (formed by Warragamba Dam) and an existing hole with infrastructure at the old Wollondilly Coal Washery, 400m above the lake and 3.1km from it. It will offer 8GWh of storage, close to Sydney, basically for the effort of digging a 3.5km tunnel and installing turbines. https://www.waternsw.com.au/water-services/renewable-energy-and-storage-program/Western-Sydney-Pumped-Hydro-Project https://www.waternsw.com.au/water-services/renewable-energy-... To their credit, Sydney Water has a range of projects based on adding pumped hydro to exiting dams, of which the above is one. Total storage capacity of projects announced to date is 25GWh. They seem ideal for firming rooftop solar around Sydney/Newcastle/Wollongong. https://www.waternsw.com.au/water-services/renewable-energy-and-storage-program https://www.waternsw.com.au/water-services/renewable-energy-...

robbiep 2y ago
The western sydney project is a no brainer. It’s being independently financed and run I think? Some mac banker saw and opportunity and ran with it