‘The only way the economics of a nuclear plant could be assured in our market would be for the rollout of solar and wind to be constrained. That seems to be the intention of Dutton’s nuclear power plan.’‘The only way the economics of a nuclear plant could be assured in our market would be for the rollout of solar and wind to be constrained. That seems to be the intention of Dutton’s nuclear power plan.
The answer is simple: we produce more electricity than we need when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and store the excess to use when they are not. We have the technologies to do that: batteries for short-term storage of a few hours and pumped hydro for long-term storage. Both types of storage are being developed and built now.
For example, our own company, Upper Hunter Hydro, is developing two pumped hydro projects which will store enough electricity to generate 1,400MW for 10 hours - that’s a fraction of the storage in Snowy 2.0 but about the same generation capacity as a large coal-fired plant. The Coalition is planning to intervene in the market to constrain the cheapest form of new generation and use taxpayers’ money to build the most expensive form