17 comments on Australia to build world's largest solar energy plant: PM
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17 comments on Australia to build world's largest solar energy plant: PM
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bjddavies,
Of course it was producing zero power, hydro is used for peak power and insuring industry against very high peak costs of $10 a kWh. The Snowy produces around 4.5GW peak, but only for 25% of the time, in fact it uses off-peak for pumped hydro. When we have replaced coal and NG by solar, geothermal and wind power,the Snowy and Tas hydro will be the jewel in the renewable energy crown. Very cheap batteries.
Maybe... if there is still enough water in the system. That's the pressing climate change issue. And that includes Tassie.
You can't peak nothing with an empty reservoir.
Below is the the last 36 months
To make this clear, The Snowy Hydro scheme is located in the larger red area (upper map) in the south-east of the mainland and the Tassie system is mainly located in the western region.
The recent floods in northern NSW and southern Queensland will do nothing for hydro storage, but may be helpful when the portion of these flows falling to the west of the divide finally finds its way down to the Coorong - where they might help reduce the affects of the recent acid sulfate acidification there.
I have to say that I agree with both of you. As I said it was Easter Sunday when I visited. The drought is very severe over there.
My main point was that the Snowy scheme was an example of what a government can do but no government has though this big for 50 years but I think they they need to otherwise things are going to end up like Mad Max in 50 years here in Oz. As for being pumped storage I think only Tumut 3 is. The water is never returned back to Lake Jindarbyne (which was nearly empty BTW) once it has left.
I hope that no stone is left unturned in Australia in the next 20 years be it river diversions/hydro, solar, shale oil or tidal or whatever in the search for new energy sources.
Hmmm - Lake Jindabyne was almost empty last year because they emptied it so they could work on the dam.
I was there in February and water levels seemed pretty good...