i am not so confused about the $11b for the upgrade of snowy 2...

i am not so confused about the $11b for the upgrade of snowy 2

Since beginning the Snowy scheme has pumped water back up pipes using electricity to store the water for when it is needed to quickly produce power.

The Snowy scheme makes a nice profit from short term power production.

A system comprising twin 10-hectare reservoirs, each 30 m deep, with a 750 m elevation difference, can deliver about 1,000 megawatts for five hours. Between 20 and 40 of these systems would be enough to stabilise a 100% renewable Australian electricity system.    

Then from the hypothetical case study for a 200 megawatt solar power facility :

The stand-alone costs of the solar power system and the short-term hydro storage system are A$2,000 and A$1,000 per kilowatt, respectively. After accounting for storage losses balanced by savings from sharing of the transformer and transmission costs between the two systems, and the fact that the hydro storage rating is half that of the PV system, that puts the total system cost at about A$2500 per kilowatt.

In other words, using pumped hydro storage to smooth out the peaks in output from a solar power station only adds an extra 25% to the cost. That’s much cheaper than using batteries.

  Source:   https://theconversation.com/how-pushing-water-uphill-can-solve-our-renewable-energy-issues-28196
[   The entire article is worth a read.  ]




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