| Your reply — and especially the attached article — misunderstand the reality of operating a grid at scale. Responding to you: Solar and wind are just as relevant to pumped hydro, which is really just a different kind of battery. The real question is how much short-duration storage is needed from chemical batteries and how much long-duration storage is needed from pumped hydro. Chemical batteries are essential for grid stabilisation, frequency control, and intra-hour balancing. They're necessary, but not sufficient. Pumped hydro provides something that no economically realistic combination of batteries, solar, and wind can yet deliver at scale: enough stored energy to contribute towards grid stability through consecutive overcast, low-wind days. The main alternative is to build and maintain gas-fired peaking plants for occasional backup, which is both costly and keeps us dependent on fossil fuels. Responding to the article: While there are credible doubts about the value of Snowy 2.0, the article does not establish its headline claim that batteries are a cheaper system-level alternative. Most critically, it doesn't acknowledge the role of pumped hydro as an insurance asset. The point of insurance isn't to be cost effective in normal times, it's to be cost effective against the risk-adjusted consequences of grid destabilisation. It is true that under normal conditions, Snowy Hydro would have little incentive to discharge fully because doing so could depress market prices. That is why capacity contracts, underwriting arrangements and reliability options exist. We know that strategic storage has substantial social value that its owner cannot fully capture through energy arbitrage. This is a common problem for reliability assets: their success can destroy the scarcity rents needed to finance them. Hence contracts. |
Vague claims that some alternative like nuclear or Snowy 2.0 will somehow make that last 1% of fossil easier to eliminate are both dubious and irrelevant if their construction uses money that could have easily eliminated 1% of fossil fuel every year for decades.
And once we get close to that last few percent of fossil gas in the electric system it would be better for costs and climate to focus on electrifying industry and homes with cheap electricity anyway.