State to push ahead with hydro projects

Three pumped hydro projects in Tasmania stand to ease power prices across Australia and end Victorian blackouts.

Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Tasmania will today announce plans to advance three pumped-hydro projects capable of providing 40GW/h in energy storage — equivalent to more than 300 Tesla batteries.

Premier Will Hodgman will announce up to $30 million to progress the three projects, in the state’s northwest, to final investment stage, while the Morrison government will promise to consider underwriting the schemes.

The announcements follow Scott Morrison’s pledges this week to advance Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro in NSW, and to provide $58m to fast-track planning for a second power interconnector ­between Tasmania and Victoria.

The Prime Minister said the combination of the new pumped-hydro projects and the second ­interconnector would make Tasmania the “Battery of the Nation”, cutting power prices nationally and ending blackouts in Victoria.

“Battery of the Nation is a ­vision that uses technology to harness Tasmania’s natural advantages to tackle the problems in our electricity market,” said Mr Morrison.

“We want to work with the Hodgman government to deliver Battery of the Nation because it’s technology that generates clean and affordable power that will make Australia’s electricity supply more reliable.

“This project is about helping those families and businesses who have had to cope with devastating blackouts in recent months and years, and helping make their power bills cheaper.”

Combined, the pumped-hydro projects and the second interconnector, which could cost up to $3 billion, are estimated to create up to 3800 jobs during construction, and inject up to $7bn chiefly into the economies of northwest Tasmania and regional Victoria.

Mr Hodgman said that the two constituted a “massive economic opportunity for Tasmanians”.

Even without the pumped hydro, he said about 400MW of available dispatchable power generation could currently not be exported to the mainland because of constraints on the existing single interconnector.

Pumped hydro involves pumping water uphill to a storage reservoir and releasing it through a turbine to provide additional ­energy into the grid when it is needed most, or attracts the best price.