by Viv Forbes, Science Writer
“Malcolm Turnbull’s “Snowy 2” debases a great name – “the Snowy Scheme”.
“The real Snowy Hydro-electric Scheme catches and stores water, uses it to generate reliable electricity, and then controls and releases that water for irrigation and other uses. It supplies both electricity and water.
“Snowy 2 is a fraud – it provides ZERO additional supplies of water or electricity. In fact it will consume some of each. It will be a giant expensive battery propping up a grid which is becoming increasingly unstable because of the growing amount of unreliable weather-dependent wind and solar power.
“It will take already stored water, buy electricity from the grid to pump that water up hill, and then recover some of that electricity by letting the water flow through turbines back down the hill.
“Their aim is to buy cheap power when wind/solar energy floods onto the grid, and use this power to pump the water back up the hill. They would then run the generators and sell electricity when power prices are high. This will damage the profitability of base-load power stations by grabbing high power prices when wind/solar fails.
“(As an aside, here is one bit of faint praise – Snowy 2 is probably better value for providing backup for unreliable green energy than the giant Tesla battery in South Australia, – but that is not saying much.)
“It is unlikely that Snowy 2 will provide an acceptable return on taxpayer investment. The Federal government has already spent about $7,500 million on buying the Snowy Scheme and the Snowy 2 construction cost is sure to exceed $4,500 million. They should sell the project and devote all this spare cash towards ensuring the construction of a couple of modern clean-coal generators. These will be urgently needed if older existing power stations are prematurely closed by green pressure.
“A short term Band-Aid would be some flexible gas backup generators paid for by the wind-solar operators who have caused the mess. But of course, thanks to lock-the-gate and death-by-delay we have no spare gas, especially down south.”
The only way pumped can logically work is to pump the water using wind mills.
There are limitations and a windy zone is required.
It has been done overseas.
The wind mills just sit there doing their thing day and night.
To simple for a FW politician.
Nothing will move the poor indoctrinated youth and the metro comfortables until they can’t run their spars an blenders and air conditioning..
I agree, Neville, but do you think any of our “Greenie wimps” will go along with this scheme.? They would all be lying down in the streets kicking their legs in anger that the nation might prosper from having “cheap electricity”. Australia has become backwards/forwards land with the gearbox in backwards ? three speeds in reverse, one slow speed in forwards. Soon we will be a “candles and matches” nation again, like pre World War 2.
What the public have not been told is their already exists a scheme along these lines which has never been used because the commission has privatised the commission and the new owners( plural number) cannot agree. This is another Liberal Party Fiasco designed to catch votes, the fact it is either impractical or unworkable or even unprofitable has never been addressed. Like all their lame brained schemes,? an LNP financial nightmare.
The above is far too complex for greens or labor to understand but very simple for people with common sense.Of course, the real reason the socialists are pushing this idiotic scheme is because part of their Agenda 21/30 which is to demolish us as a “lucky country”.So much so that we become 3rd world and totally under their control.
It would be cheaper to buy some mothballed nuclear powered vessels and park them in each shipping port and plug them into shore power
Thanks for that background. Even without any briefing I would say it is a dud. Why? – because Turdball is a traitorous globalist who has – from the start – been an enemy of Australia. He destroyed the NBN which, interestingly, would be the only thing of merit one could give Rudd and sold us out to the Internationalists. Sadly all of the important players in Australia are bought and paid for – this is why nothing ever changes..