Group to lodge fast track consent bid for axed Lake Onslow hydro project

Anan Zaki, reporting for RNZ about a month ago:

A private consortium looking to revive the Lake Onslow pumped hydro storage scheme is preparing to lodge a fast-track consent application with the government. ... Turner said the project would secure long-term, reliable power supply during dry hydro inflows, and was a better alternative than coal.

The project put forward would be similar to the previously scrapped plan, with a 1000 megawatt power station and just over 5000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of storage capacity.

Whether this is built privately or publicly, this seems like a project well worth doing.

This hydro lake idea is different to our other lakes: it uses power to pump water into the lake when power is abundant and cheap, acting like a massive battery for when power is expensive. It means that instead of using coal or fossil gas to shore up our electricity, we can use water.

Combine that with abundant solar and you have a winning system that relies on no fossil fuel imports.

Of course, there are other ways we could achieve the same ends. Lithium ion batteries are falling in price year on year. We could deploy grid scale batteries that way, either with dedicated systems or hacking together old EV batteries and attaching them to the grid. If I was a competent electrical engineer, I could have an opinion on what methods we should prioritise. But, alas, I'm just a dude with a blog.

I'm not opposed to fast track in principle – transforming our energy system as fast as we need to requires quick approval. This is one worth doing, I'd say. It's far better for achieving a safe climate and cheaper energy than fossil gas terminals or coal mines.

It'll be interesting to see whether it gets off the ground.