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 […]

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) […]

Water Wise: Time To Kill Off Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro White Elephant

Wind and large-scale solar are doomed, but the saviour is said to be pumped hydro; paid for, of course, with other people’s money. Touted by ex-PM Malcom Turnbull and his hapless sidekick, Josh Frydenberg as the Nation’s mega-battery, the heavily-hyped Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme (shelved in the 1970s because it was uneconomic then) has […]

Déjà vu All Over Again: Liberal PM Determined to Squander $10 Billion on Pumped Hydro White Elephant

  Australia’s obsession with hopelessly intermittent wind and solar has rendered its power supply both unreliable and unaffordable: it’s time to stop digging. Except, on both sides of the political divide, it seems the obsession is one without reason or respite. Labor’s opposition leader, Bill Shorten is determined to destroy Australia’s economic prosperity – literally […]

Flat Battery: Busting the Myth of Grid Scale Storage of Wind & Solar Power

STT will keep smashing the line about giant batteries overcoming the chaotic delivery of wind and solar, while RE zealots keep pushing it. Over recent posts we focused on the insane cost and limited capacity of giant lithium-ion batteries of the kind peddled by reefer-smoking Californian carpetbagger, Elon Musk (see above and our post here). […]

Coal Wins Power Price ‘War’: Adding Storage Renders Cost of Wind & Solar Astronomical

The myth that wind and solar are meaningful power sources was busted long ago. Quite apparently incapable of operating on their own, what purports to be the future of electricity generation turns out to be a pair of complete duds. [Note to Ed: is this the part where we point out tricky facts such as […]

Time to Die: New PM Must Bury Turnbull’s $10bn Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro Boondoggle

Wind and large-scale solar are doomed, but the saviour is said to be pumped hydro; paid for, of course, with other people’s money. Touted by ex-PM Malcom Turnbull and his hapless sidekick, Josh Frydenberg as the Nation’s mega-battery, the heavily-hyped Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme (shelved in the 1970s because it was uneconomic then) has […]

Germany’s Renewable Energy Disaster – Part 1: Wind & Solar Deemed ‘Technological Failures’

Germany’s wind and solar experiment has failed: the so-called ‘Energiewende’ (energy transition) has turned into an insanely costly debacle. German power prices have rocketed; blackouts and load shedding are the norm; and idyllic rural communities are now industrial wastelands (see above). Hundreds of billions of euros have been squandered on subsidies to wind and solar, […]