Battery of a nation or global POWERHOUSE?
THERE is an irresistible elegance to Hydro Tasmania’s battery of a nation vision.
The notion of using energy generated by wind turbines to pump water back up the hill into dams for use, and reuse, in hydropower generation is seductive in its fundamental engineering logic.
It addresses wind energy’s achilles heel (when gusts are stilled and turbines stall) by treating water in the dams as power in storage. The wind tops up the battery.
It is simplicity amplified to audacious innovation.
Back in the late 1800s an idea of similar elegance took hold of imaginations in Tasmania when the state began to harness nature by using the island’s river systems to generate electricity so as to attract industrial enterprise.
The idea was realised above Launceston’s Cataract Gorge where a power station at Duck Reach, fed by water from Trevallyn Dam, powered the northern city. Launceston became known as one of the world’s best lit cities in the early 1900s. The state-run power scheme offered companies cheap, reliable electricity and, in the next few decades, lured some of the world’s largest, most respected textile firms, creating thousands of jobs.
This incredible success became a template for hydroindustrialisation in Tasmania and beyond, with the Snowy River power scheme built half a century later. It lit the fuse on unprecedented prosperity, jobs and economic growth.
I admire the audacity of those who had the vision and perseverance to transform such an elegant design from nothing but thoughtful musing into hard economic reality. It alludes to something integral and potent in the human spirit.
All went to plan with hydro-industrialisation until the late 1960s and early 1970s when neighbours in SouthEast Asia and the Pacific began to attract investor capital with the lure of Third World wages and less workplace regulation.
Tasmania attracted capital through the 1900s with the promise of subsidised power known colloquially as cheap but which, in fact, burdened the state’s finances to the extent it still represented $1 billion debt in the 1990s.
The running cost of the state’s hydro system was relatively cheap; the power price paid by companies was a pittance; the rain was free; but the build cost weighed down the state’s balance sheet.
The textiles industry has since fled offshore and what is left of the sector is a shadow of its 20th century self. Other industries drawn here by cheap power remain today and have the state government over a barrel, demanding cheap power or threatening to leave, putting hundreds of jobs at risk
— a political price government won’t willingly pay.
By the late 1960s the vast environmental cost of hydroindustrialisation, while not on the balance sheet, was also being counted, with the loss of the original Lake Pedder and its unique inland pink-quartz beach rimmed by mountains mourned as the sinking of a priceless asset and a tragedy.
In this big picture context of hydro-industrialisation, I want to raise some questions about the widely supported battery of a nation vision.
Who’s paying for it? Will taxpayers foot the bill for construction? The state? Federal government? Private company? Public-private partnership?
In the end, of course, consumers will pay, but who will be lumbered with the liability in the meantime?
How much environmental damage will there be? Dams in national parks and the World Heritage Area will likely need pipes and machinery to pump water uphill. What effect will more variable dam use have on the river systems?
The battery of a nation requires another cable across Bass Strait at the cost of billions of dollars. Instead, why not do away with the cables altogether and focus on supplying 100 per cent renewable energy to firms willing to base production here just like we lured the textiles industry with the promise of cheap power 100 years ago?
Why not target companies and products that want a renewable brand?
Why not use wind to refill dams so as to generate power for onshore industries? Why not exploit this competitive advantage in a post-fossil-fuel world and market the state to the world as a renewables powerhouse? The global textile industry did not just “happen” to come here a century ago. The state conducted an international marketing campaign. Why not get out there and spruik?
Why not export surplus power as hydrogen generated solely with renewable energy?
Why not encourage rollout of the latest solar panels and storage for Tasmanian homes?
Why not design a selfsufficient system to sustain half a million people, power industry, export renewable grade hydrogen, and template the model to the world?
Why not build a global brand with renewable energy powering ferries across the River Derwent and electric cars and buses on the roads?
Bell Bay smelter will close, having a devastating effect on the community. Why not act now to attract new industry?
I don’t have the answers to these questions and there may be reasons we can’t do any of this, but if Canberra refuses to take the lead, why shouldn’t Tasmania have the temerity to be a beacon of light for the region if not the world? We did it 13 decades ago at Duck Reach.
Small islands offshore from much bigger populations have through history been at the forefront of wealth creation, just look at Hong Kong and Taiwan. Why not Tasmania?
Rather than the battery of a nation, why can’t we be the light on the hill?