Coal is retiring, and new sources of renewable energy like wind and solar are cheap and becoming more plentiful. But they are variable so energy storage is needed to help fill the gaps and maintain the reliability and stability of our electricity supply. That’s where Tasmania can help!
Lake Cethana, Lake Rowallan and Tribute pumped hydro opportunities stacked up as the most promising when we assessed them against a range of technical, environmental, financial and social criteria as part of studies carried out over the last 20 months to assess Tasmania’s pumped hydro potential.
These sites were selected from the original list of 14 potential pumped hydro options identified across Tasmania. They represent strong and sustainable development opportunities with the sort of long-term storage options the future national electricity market will need.
We are now progressing our feasibility study, to take a closer look at their potential and decide on the first site that could be developed.
You can learn more about this work in the “Pumped hydro feasibility study” section below.
We are committed to keeping communities informed about the work we are doing. Drop-in information sessions are being held during August and September with our project team.
This is your chance to come along and learn more about what’s ahead for pumped hydro. We look forward to sharing more information with you, and listening to your thoughts and opinions.
Drop-in session dates and times
Come at any time for a chat with our team. You can stay as long or as little as you like. Our technical team will be available for discussions and to answer your questions (and to share a cup of tea with you). We'll be serving refreshments during the drop-in sessions. Kids are welcome!
*You can also learn about our sustainability review on the King and Yolande catchments. Come along to hear more about our findings and talk to our team about what matters most to you in this area.
We’re pumped to announce our three most promising pumped hydro sites and to get started on the detailed investigation of these key opportunities.
Work has now begun on a full feasibility assessment of opportunities at Lake Cethana and Lake Rowallan in the North-West and near Tribute Power Station on the West Coast. This will involve grassroots community engagement, geotechnical investigations and environmental, heritage and social assessments.
The studies undertaken during the feasibility stage include:
Check out the information below on selecting a pumped hydro site, for more information on the process ahead.
Selecting a suitable pumped hydro site for future development is a complex process! There are many different factors that we need to look at and we need to determine how to prioritise all of this information.
We use a process called “multi-criteria analysis”. This uses a number of technical, environmental and social criteria to assess sites.
The criteria used are:
We collect the best available information from each site and assess it against these criteria using both quantitative and qualitative methods to identify the top sites. Feedback was gathered from the community during our pre-feasibility study and that has helped shape the site selection and design process.
In the feasibility stage, more detailed, field based information will be collected to confirm assumptions, assess the suitability of the sites for development and to narrow down a preferred project design and layout.
Download our Feasibility Study Fact Sheet to find out more about the process ahead.
Pumped hydro developments are major infrastructure projects that consist of water storages and underground structures including power stations, tunnels and caverns.
Before projects are chosen to proceed to development, you need to know what the surface and underground conditions are like at the site.
An important early part of the feasibility study is completing the work that helps us understand this.
One of the many different inputs we need is geological and geotechnical data, that tells us what the ground conditions will be like both at the surface and at depth.
We’ll be doing two types of geotechnical and geological investigations – test pitting and drilling – in the Lake Cethana and Lake Rowallan areas between September and December 2019.
We are targeting locations at Lake Cethana and Lake Rowallan where some of the major pumped hydro infrastructure might go – the intake from the lake, the water tunnels, the power station and the new upper water storage. The sites being investigated are on the western side above Lake Cethana and the western side above Lake Rowallan.
Download our Geotechnical Fact Sheet to find out more about what’s involved.
We are nearing completion of our pre-feasibility studies on the remaining pumped hydro sites.
We expect to finalise this work later in 2019 and will take into account work on the three most promising sites now undergoing feasibility assessment. Find out more here.
The outcome is a pipeline of potential future pumped hydro projects that can deliver 2500MW of capacity and be developed in stages as the electricity market transitions.
Our pumped hydro pre-feasibility analysis has funding support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), as part of its Advancing Renewables program.
Hydro Tasmania released a comprehensive report in April 2018 on its assessment of the state’s pumped hydro opportunity. Find the report here.
Pumped hydro energy storage systems have an upper and lower reservoir. The water is stored in the upper reservoir, ready to use when electricity is needed.
When demand is high and supply is needed, the water can be run through a turbine to the lower reservoir, generating electricity.
The water in the lower reservoir gets pumped back uphill when there is excess electricity in the system (which often happens with wind and solar).
Our short video explains how it all works!
More than 70% of Australia’s power currently comes from coal-fired power stations that are likely to close in the next few decades.
Wind and solar are becoming the dominant sources of new energy but they are variable. That’s simply because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.
That means energy storage will be crucial in the future, to help balance wind and solar energy in the system and ensure energy is reliably available when consumers need it.
Pumped hydro is a proven technology for storing large-scale clean energy and provides around 96% of total worldwide storage capacity.
Tasmania has natural advantages in developing pumped hydro because we have existing assets and storages, just waiting for the ‘add on’.
Want to find out more? Check out this short video.
We’ve put together some commonly asked questions about pumped hydro.
We welcome views from the Tasmanian community and will continue to keep you informed as studies progress.
We welcome your suggestions on the best way to provide project updates or for you to contact us with questions you may have.