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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-10-14 Daily Xml
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Renewable Energy Initiatives

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (15:35): Last night, I attended a web-based seminar delivered by Professor Andrew Blakers, who is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian National University. Professor Blakers' work has profound importance for South Australia, because it could well be the key that unlocks the potential for South Australia to become the first 100 per cent renewable energy state in Australia.

As members know, our state already leads the nation in renewable energy. We have half the nation's windfarms and an impressive uptake of solar photovoltaic panels on homes and businesses across the state. Despite dire predictions that the grid could not cope, it does cope, and it will continue to do so as technologies develop. With the completion of the latest Snowtown wind farm, South Australia will be generating nearly 40 per cent of electricity from wind and solar.

However, there will come a point at which intermittency will need to be balanced with energy storage. That is one of the reasons why replacing the soon-to-be decommissioned coal-fired power station at Port Augusta with a concentrated solar thermal and storage plant is such an exciting concept. But that is not the only energy storage option available. We also have the emerging new battery technologies that are forecast to drop even further in price and will allow whole communities to go off grid and become self sufficient using renewable energy.

Another exciting prospect, and the one that Professor Blakers spoke about last night, is what is known as off-river pumped hydro energy storage. As its name implies, this technology involves the generation of electricity using hydropower, extracting the energy from water as it passes through a turbine. Traditionally, such schemes have involved the construction of massive dams on major rivers, such as the hydro schemes of the Snowy Mountains or south-west Tasmania. It is simple technology, but it comes at a massive cost, both economically and environmentally.

Off-river pumped hydro, on the other hand, does not require the damming of major rivers. It involves the construction of relatively small water storages at the top and bottom of hills, with connecting pipes between them. Similar to farm dams, these would be around 5 to 10 hectares each, with a head of between 100 and 1,000 metres. For example, a system comprising twin 10-hectare reservoirs, each 30 metres deep, with a 750-metre elevation difference, can deliver about 1,000 megawatts for five hours. At a national level, between 20 and 40 of these systems would be enough to stabilise a 100 per cent renewable Australian electricity system.

How it works is relatively simple. When there is excess electricity (from wind farms or solar panels), water is pumped through a pipe from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir. The energy is later recovered by letting the water flow back down again through a turbine that converts it back into electricity. Efficiencies of 90 per cent in each direction are possible.

Electricity storage systems need to be able to deliver instant power output for periods of up to a few hours. This covers short-term fluctuations in wind and solar outputs, peaks in consumer demand, such as the very hot summer afternoons, and unplanned outages of generation and transmission infrastructure.

Australia has thousands of potentially excellent sites in hilly areas which are outside national parks, forests or other conservation reserves. They do not even need to be near a wind or solar farm, but proximity to the existing grid is an advantage. Off-river electricity storage has several advantages over typical on-river facilities, including the fact that the water is re-used over and over again, with only minor and manageable losses through evaporation.

Of the available electricity storage options, such as batteries and flywheels, pumped hydro is by far the cheapest. It has no standby losses while the water waits in the reservoir and can reach full power in 30 seconds.

In terms of construction costs, as the reservoirs are relatively small compared with typical hydro reservoirs, they are a minor component of the cost. Most of the cost is in the power components: the pipes, pumps, turbines, transformers and transmission. Initial estimates suggest that the cost of an off-river system at a good site is around $1,100 per kilowatt over its life or $33 per megawatt hour of energy actually stored, and that is far cheaper than batteries or stored heat from CST plants.

Professor Blakers and his team at the Australian National University are currently investigating all the good sites in Australia for pumped hydro. They know there are thousands of suitable sites, including many in South Australia. The hills around Whyalla, Port Augusta and the Mid North are likely to feature prominently in their audit.

On behalf of the Greens, I would urge the government to look very seriously at the prospects in our state for this exciting development in renewable energy. If members would like to know more, you can look at the various online papers or at the feasibility study currently being undertaken in Queensland at Kidston, which is west of Townsville.

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