All Downhill: Australia’s Largest Pumped Hydro Scheme Grinds to Insanely Costly Halt

Loose talk about ‘green’ hydrogen, mega-batteries and pumped hydro is the default response from rent seekers forced to face up to wind and solar’s hopeless intermittency. None of the aforementioned generate a single watt of electricity; all of them chew up mountains of energy and resources in their creation; and all of them consume electricity […]

Diesel Driven: World’s First “Net-Zero” Wind Power/Pumped Hydro System A Dismal Failure

The climate/RE cult’s latest mantra “net-zero”, apparently means wind and solar connected to batteries or pumped hydro. The notion has it that wind and solar’s hopeless intermittency can be overcome by a few TWh’s worth of giant lithium-ion batteries or, where geography and hydrology permit, pumped hydro systems. The latter model involves using wind and […]

Impossible Dream: Why Energy Storage Systems Can’t Solve Wind & Solar’s Intermittency

Renewable energy storage is literally setting the world on fire. When giant lithium-ion batteries aren’t exploding in toxic balls of flame, their limited capacity means that they add a trivial occasional trickle of electricity to the grid; and do so at an astronomical cost. The wind and solar acolyte would have us believe that if […]

Wicked Waste: Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro Project Australia’s Biggest Energy White Elephant

With a price tag in excess of $10 billion, Australia’s biggest pumped hydro project, Snowy 2.0, is easily its single biggest white elephant. Sure, the Feds have already squandered magnitudes more on subsidies and soft loans to wind and solar. And the purported benefit of Snowy 2.0 is to use excess wind and solar power […]

All Uphill: Australia Squanders $10Billion on Giant Pumped Hydro Power White Elephant

Australia has its former PM, Malcolm Turnbull to thank for its largest and most expensive renewable energy boondoggle, the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project. Touted by the patrician and aloof Turnbull and his hapless sidekick, Josh Frydenberg as the Nation’s mega-battery, the heavily-hyped pumped hydro scheme (shelved in the 1970s because it was uneconomic then) […]

A Bigger Picture: Thank Malcolm Turnbull For Australia’s Power Pricing & Supply Calamity

Malcolm Turnbull’s miserable presence endures in the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project, a white elephant that’ll cost taxpayers at least $10billion. Before he was ditched as PM by his Liberal Party over his pitch to expand subsidies to chaotically intermittent wind and solar and to extend those subsidies until the end of time, Malcolm Turnbull […]