Snowy Hydro dumps coal for wind and solar to pump its water

Snowy Hydro will use wind and solar energy not coal to support its pumped hydro storage generators in a deal the company says will help cut households power bills from 2020.

Snowy Hydro will use wind and solar to pump water
uphill, slashing its energy generation costs.CREDIT:

“This agreement will put significant pressure on wholesale electricity prices which will lead to downward pressure on retail – household – energy prices,” Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad said.

Read the story from The Age by Cole Latimer - “Snowy Hydro dumps coal for wind and solar to pump its water.”

Turnbull’s coal delusions as COAG “changes course” on energy

It is getting increasingly hard to make sense of exactly what is happening in Australian energy policy these days. Just ask comedian Rob Sitch, who looked at the industry while researching for his new series of “Utopia”, where he plays the head of the fictional National Building Authority.

From ABC TV’s Utopia series.

Looking for “grand plans” that his character could announce, he conducted a mini Finkel review of his own and looked specifically at Snowy Hydro, even before the Turnbull government’s announcement of Snowy 2.0. What he found wasn’t so much an energy industry as a market more in common with junk bonds on Wall Street.

“Truth is stranger than fiction,” he said in an interview last week. In the end, he just found it too bizarre, even for a program like Utopia, which specialises in improbable projects that have the lure of being “announceble” even if they are never built: Essentially a Snowy Hydro, for government naming rights.

There has been more than bit of that sort of caper in the last few months, and the late John Clarke summed it up neatly with Bryan Dawe in one of the last episodes of their weekly satire, in a memorable interview with “Wal Socket.”

Read the story by Giles Parkinson on RenewEconomy - “Turnbull’s coal delusions as COAG “changes course” on energy.” 

Snowy Hydro preparing for El Nino dry

S

nowy Hydro is preparing for an El Nino dry that will extend well into 2016 by slashing power generation as it harbours its water reserves to avoid prospective shortages it encountered in the previous big dry a decade ago.

"Our forecasts are telling us the El Nino will extend well into next autumn and more recently it has been extended – month by month – into winter," Snowy Hydro managing director Paul Broad said.

For keen skiers, a prolonged lack of precipitation may signal a poor start to the 2016 winter season but, for large power users the prospect of unseasonably low rainfall over the next six months or so, it may point to increased volatility along with higher wholesale power prices heading into 2016.

Read The Age story by Brian Robins - “Forecast El Nino dry forces Snowy Hydro to harbour water”.