I find it strange that this is all of a sudden back, and fast tracked at that just after the recent news about the data centre in Southland.
When National halted research into the $16 billion scheme two and a half years ago, Kaikoura MP Stuart Smith told Newsroom that if the project was viable, private enterprise would build it.
Instead of us owning it, they gave it to “large global entities” so we can rent it back from them, forever.
The Lake Onslow project could actually get us much, much closer to 100% renewables. It’s sad to see it being thatchered out to the highest bidder.
I think National just wanted the headline of “undo everything Labour did” and it came at a great cost to future generations.
Not really. Investing in electricity storage when there’s going to be a big increase in demand is just how things work.
I find it strange that this is all of a sudden back
Previously it was a government project, but this article makes it sound like it’s now a private enterprise. The government wanted a giant project to create jobs post-COVID, but this has been scaled back a lot to drop the cost. It does sound like a great plan, though I don’t necessarily understand the flow on impacts of flooding a valley.
The important part here is that it will have pumped hydro capability, so excess power generation (e.g. solar) can be stored by using the power to pump water back up to the lake then re-generate the power later. This helps provide base load generation in any weather conditions.
We already have a significant amount of storage…Taupō holds many TWh of generating capacity.
If instead of spending $16B on this; we could buy back a significant portion of the power companies they sold and make them work as a single system with the lakes as primarily a storage resource.
Then put in these more intermittent sources over the next few years with the existing lakes as the giant buffer.
What’s the difference from today? With pumped hydro at least you have somewhere to send excess power generation.
One important thing here is about the ramp up time. I wasn’t able to find anything that explains about how long it takes for a hydro power station to start producing when it’s off (and equally, to stop when it’s on). It feels like it should be quick, open a gate and the water falls and spins the turbine, surely this can happen within seconds or minutes?
If that’s the case, then loading up on solar should effectively balance out the water usage, so you could generate heaps of power on sunny days and use no hydro, then bring hydro online to help cover the night.
At the moment I believe hydro is used a lot for covering the base load, but if it can be turned on and off quickly there’s no reason that needs to be the case. But if it takes hours to turn on or off a hydro station, then the argument for pumped hydro is stronger since you can pump while it’s running (using excess solar generation).
You are mostly correct, hydro is used as base load rather than storage.
The use of hydro is dictated my market forces rather than efficiency.
Hydro ramp rates are fairly fast 15-30 minutes, usually faster because you are not going from stopped to 100%
Batteries should be used to buffer short term fluctuations, these can ramp up in seconds and hold for a while to let the hydro catch up.
Batteries should be used to buffer short term fluctuations, these can ramp up in seconds and hold for a while to let the hydro catch up.
Battery storage at grid scale is pretty new, and I don’t think NZ has any yet (just a planned one up north). A big downside too batteries is they will need replacing a lot, I hope we have appropriate recycling facilities to handle it.
One of the main benefits of hydro is the longevity. If you go big then you can build something that will still be going 100 years from now, making a very low cost per watt over it’s lifetime. The scheme in the OP seems like it’s building a whole new dam, they must think that adding the pumping to is is worthwhile otherwise they would just build the dam without the pumping component.
The use of hydro is dictated my market forces rather than efficiency.
I’m curious what you meant by that, that we use hydro because it’s cheap?
No, they use hydro because they get money now rather than using something else and save the lake level for traditionally dry periods.
Also, over the last decade nonrenewable has been installed at great cost, this is not due to the best choice for everybody, but because the power companies get significant return.
It is really hard to justify anything against solar right now, but we are installing a very small amount.
Our power scheme does seem to incentivise scarcity as then the generating companies get paid more for generating the same amount of power. I see what you mean now about a government owned and coordinated hydro scheme, where hydro is used when it’s the best option instead of when it pays the most.
It is really hard to justify anything against solar right now, but we are installing a very small amount.
Are we? Every time I turn around a new solar farm seems to pop up.
In a well run system we would install 10 times as much, while retiring the dirty, expensive and maintenance heavy old plants.
Honestly, the $16B being used for this scheme, spent on solar and and battery would deliver a much greater benefit to NZ, but would ‘crash’ the price of power to historical lows, thus meaning that the investment would be self defeating.
The flow on benefits from such low power process would more than pay for the investment
I’m not sue what to make of all this but when I see quotes like:
Turner says: “If we had to go through a normal consenting process, they just take so long, they’re so expensive, a project like this would really struggle.”
I can’t help but think of my teenagers whining when they don’t want to do a chore properly.
We have rules and processes for good reasons, it’s frustrating when it seems to be ‘cool’ to throw all this away because it’s inconvenient
