Hydro Pumped Up
I was in some agreement with Reg Lawler (“Good large scale renewables” GToday Aug 23) until he got to unequivocal support for Borumba Pumped Hydro asserting even that it is the cheapest storage option.
This would seem to fly in the face of the global trend away from pumped hydro, as outlined in a recent article in Renew Economics where it was pointed out that the capacity of battery storage around the world is about to overtake pumped hydro
In less than seven years since the world’s really big battery, battery storage technology has shown exponential growth.
Reg ponders too whether Borumba pumped Hydro has community support. The truth is that few have any sort of understanding of the scale of works proposed, the five-fold increase in the capacity of Borumba dam (making it even bigger than the ill-conceived Traveston Crossing Dam), the creation of a new upper reservoir half as big again as the present Borumba drowning impressive forest to the south.
But there’s more.
As if the inundation of threatened lowland rainforest around the enlarged lower dam isn’t worrying enough, consider the impacts of a several metre tide as water goes to and fro, up and down, between the two.
The most likely outcome from the up and down transfer of such large volumes of water will be an increase in turbidity and a decline in water quality for all the present uses of Borumba Dam water.
And of course there’s the two sets of transmission lines, construction of which is viewed as a separate project but of course they are intrinsically linked.
For anyone who’s lived here awhile and remembers how the entire community arose for that epic three and half year battle to stop Traveston dam, the community silence about the pumped hydro itself (transmission lines a different matter) might seem bewildering.
The recent Queensland Hydro advertising blitz evoked in many a déjà vu of Traveston, glossy marketing aplenty at the expense of discussing the impacts or, heaven forbid, the alternatives.
Cheapest, I think not. A white knight to lower emissions, not that either.
And the community, watching on as the project steams on apace before it even has the necessary approvals to do exploratory works, it looks more and more like Traveston Mark 2.
Ian Mackay Moy Pocket
