Nick Cater: Malcolm Turnbull's dream for pumped hydro has hit a snag - and he wants your money to still make it happen
Transmission projects are way behind schedule and are increasingly facing community resistance, just as they are in the US, where expensive wind and solar projects sit idle because they can't be connected to the grid. Generators run by pumped hydro cannot operate continuously since they are limited by the amount of water that can be pumped and stored.
Seven years ago, Turnbull called a press conference at Talbingo, NSW, to announce the feasibility study for what he said would be the biggest battery in the southern hemisphere."This is commercial," he said.Snowy Hydro 2.0 was initially scheduled to be completed this year.The delay hardly matters in one sense since the construction of Hume Link connecting the project has yet to begin.
Together they would produce three gigawatts or more of reliable electricity from a generator capable of running for 95 per cent of the time for at least 60 years and almost certainly longer.