Today there is a report in The Australian on the latest official news about Snowy2.0. It is still going on, so we can expect more bad news for some years to come:)
My comment was published on line, with a reference to our briefing note 22.8 which shows that it is a dog of a scheme. This is an opportunity for people to get to the website, lets see how many people turn up!
This is the comment.
The Snowy2.0 was never going to make a useful contribution to the power supply, according to modelling done for The Energy Realists of Australia and reported in their note 22.8 which was sent to 800+ politicians across the country and a long list of journalists and commentators. You can read it at the website “energy realists of australia flickerpower”. Read and weep!
The project was launched as a political stunt without a proper business case or due diligence regarding the hydrology of the site. Experienced Snowy hands from the original scheme met some of the planners and walked away shaking their heads because nobody was interested in their experience.
It was obvious right from the start that S2.o was never going to get off the ground. That is for scientific and engineering reasons quite apart from the fact that it was the brainchild of an incompetent nincompoop (and by this of course, I mean the Turd). If it ever gets going, which I doubt it will, it will be an energy storage system reliant on energy input from other sources. As such it will consume more energy that it releases and so be a net drain on the country’s energy resources. This is immediately obvious to anyone who has the slightest knowledge of thermodynamics which obviously excludes all the relevant decision makers. By the time it’s finished, some time in the next 100 years, there will be no reliable and efficient sources of thermally produced electrical energy left for it to store. Windmills, solar panels and unicorn farts won’t cut it. Nuclear is a logical solution but even if it was approved tomorrow it would lake longer to build and cost more than S2.0
The whole scheme is a horrendously expensive and useless white elephant and we will all be worse off for its existence.
Another legacy of the second worst prime minister we had in this country, Whitlam being the gold standard disaster that can never be surpassed.
Vagabond. The claim always was / still is: by day (off-peak) there will be unused electricity created by RE sources. Instead of wasting it, this excess “should” be used to push water uphill and into Tantangara Reservoir from Talbingo / Blowering Reservoirs where it can be stored until needed. Needed = allowed to flow downhill through tunnels from Tantangara to Lob’s Hole / Ravine where it will traverse turbines to create instant electricity at peak hour before entering Talbingo Reservoir. Repeat this entire process endlessly. This might add up if……if….if…
Without bothering about anything else like the fractured nature of the rock being drilled for tunnels etc, the hugely wrong assumption is that there will ever be EXCESS electricity from RE sources. The multiple-million proposed Electric Vehicles headed our way will never allow any excess supply of RE electricity at bargain-basement prices to be produced. THAT is the flaw.
no, it never added up and it never will.
one problem is that at least 4x as much RE infrastructure is deployed than is necessary for the job at hand
that infrastructure produces excesses when in isn’t needed
it also produces a lack when it is required.
S2.0 is a whole pile of cope and what’s the overall efficiency of it … 0.5?
the glass is already twice as big as it needs to be
now add future EVs … and we’re gonna need a even bigger mountain
all of this is based on unicorn-farts instead of reality
Interestingly they would need a whole lot more hydro storage to deal with the dip in wind last night (3/5/23) when the sun wasn’t shining.
Wind output dropped from 60% capacity factor to sub 5%, resulting in almost 6GW of output being removed from the system.
SA, the leader in wind power has a current (8am, 4/5/23) wind production output of less than 20MW and less than 1% capacity factor.
Turnbull Team planning; exactly like the French L’incroyable Class submarines – a colossal river of cash flowing for years into the future, carefully curated by a small connected group, results irrelevant.
Rafe,
all the wasted taxpayer and borrowed money spent on the project may yet do something that stupid and craven people like Turnbull et al., never thought possible: keep Eraring open for a lot longer and until this country realises that going green is an impossible dream.
If it does that and if/because the ongoing and insurmountable delays will continue, it should force the government to scrap the entire brain fart. And if that happens it will stop the manufacture and positioning of klms of poles and wires to the site.
Personally, I think time is running out for Luigi and Blackout Bowen on public trust in their ability to bring down power prices. Next week, of course, is the Budget and there will be financial support for pensioners etc by all accounts. But that can’t keep going forever. People will wake up – just like they have in Germany and elsewhere.
ps thanks for another great piece.
No. I spoke to an engineer down at the Cooma centre a couple of years ago about it. He was an honest man. His estimate 80% efficiency at the very best.
He explained very clearly that it doesn’t create “new” electricity, just recycles it to re-sell at a higher rate during peak demand, which is pretty much what the Snowy system does already. We watched it happen in real time. He knew the hype was all b/s on stilts.
Found this article to be very useful on how German renewable dream didn’t work out as planned – with political and other side effects.
what-germanys-effort-to-leave-coal-behind-can-teach-the-us
The ex-CEO of Snowy Hydro on 2GB this morning:
“The notion that we can have 80 per cent renewables by 2030 is bullshit,” Broad told Ben Fordham.
80%?
Based on what premise?
turdballs (someone else supplying balls) has an ego almost as humongous as krudds.
I cannot imagine any true human holding a belief that this brain explosion was ever going to be feasible.
I worked in civil contracting for a long time and longed for the day when I could have had a deal like this one, left open to “variations “ on such a wide scale, hence the cost blowouts. Bureaucrats like the woke left followers were prime pickings.
There is not one major project released in this country in the last 4 million years (or other long time) which has not gone over budget, mainly due to the ineptitude of those administrations populated by people like the danistan worshippers.
FMD
I hope to live as long as it takes to complete Snowy 2.0 . A long winded way of saying immortal.
maybe it is 80% from pump up, to generator down
but that efficiency doesnt account for the massive overspend in the ruinables that drive the cope-machine.
to be even more blunt,
if the ruinables did their job,
then we wouldn’t even need a cope-machine
Bar Beach Swimmer:
And double that from me, Rafe. Many of your posts make it to my Nationwide network of fans on Facebook .
All two of them.
It’s the thought that counts…
🙂