Snowy 2.0 cost blowout exposes folly of poor planning

I’d never thought a pumped storage system for electricity would be termed a “water battery”, but it is an accurate description from Ted Woodley (“Snowy reset can’t hide the profligate waste of taxpayer money”, 26/10).

His article reveals the incredible costs associated with switching our national electricity supply to renewables. No doubt early estimates for Snowy 2.0 came from the back of an envelope or its electronic equivalent, and referred only to a small part of the overall needs for the nation. He mentioned one of the major interconnections needed for transmission of remotely generated electricity to urban markets; the others are incredibly expensive too.

Adding pumped storage is never going to be cheap, but it works and is needed if we head down this path. It will be operating at a low marginal cost when several incarnations of solar cells and windmills have taken place, just as Snowy 1.0 is still working for us, an age after it came into operation.

Net Present Value calculations have distinct limitations for ventures such as decarbonising the national electricity supply, they focus on the short term and are highly sensitive to assumptions, and omissions.

Ken Dredge, Camp Hill, Qld

The six-times cost blowout of Snowy 2.0, from $2bn to $12bn epitomises the recklessness of Labor’s renewables fantasy and represents just one more step in locking in unaffordable and non-competitive power for Australia for the foreseeable future.

As with most renewables projects, it is weather-dependent and environmentally destructive on a major scale. Snowy 2.0 is a giant 2200MW battery, dependent not only on water supplies but on surplus power from weather-dependent wind and solar farms. How you can develop an industrial base on such a flimsy, outrageously expensive project is beyond me.

In contrast, with Snowy’s fully built-up cost, including transmission of around $25bn, you could have around 4000MW of small modular nuclear reactors generating electricity 24/7, located on former coal-power plant sites with minimal environmental disturbance.

Ron Hobba, Camberwell, Vic

The recent reports about massive cost blowouts and delays to Snowy 2.0 demonstrate the folly of poor planning and indecent haste when it comes to massive renewable energy infrastructure projects – with terrible outcomes for the community.

This same folly is now being repeated in multibillion-dollar overhead transmission projects for renewable energy that should – by any reasonable assessment – be placed underground for the benefit of the environment, safety, reliability and the regional communities.

In the case of the 360km, $4.9bn HumeLink transmission project in southern NSW, which is designed to carry energy from the delayed Snowy 2.0 disaster, all arms of government are in lock-step in their relentless demand to push ahead with the current and dangerous overhead plan at all cost.

The HumeLink high-voltage overhead transmission is the umbilical cord between Snowy 2.0 hydro generation and electricity consumers in the greater Sydney region. The trouble is the probability Snowy 2.0 has been blown out of the water by the huge geological and construction issues facing the constructors of Snowy 2.0’s new tunnel network. If HumeLink is built and Snowy 2.0 hits the wall, we will still be on the hook for another minimum $5bn and that cost can only be reflected in higher electricity prices. That’s a lot of schools and hospitals.

Federal and state parliamentarians will soon need to answer community concerns over rising power prices and the failure to provide additional essential services like schools and hospitals. I believe there needs to be a massive rethink of Snowy 2.0 and HumeLink. Let’s get our renewable energy future right, rather than continuing to blow money on poorly planned projects.

Michael Katz, Gurrundah, NSW

Given that it requires significantly more energy to pump water up to the high-level reservoir than is generated by its outfall, Energy Minister Chris Bowen needs to provide evidence of how the project is still a $3bn net value after expenditure of $12bn plus $10bn of transmission lines.

Charles Stanger, Manuka, ACT