Quote:
Originally Posted by AussieTrooper
Interesting to see pumped hydro going ahead. It is very 'lossy' compared to battery banks. .
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What do you base that comment on? Typical large pumped-storage hydro schemes have round-trip efficiency of around 80%, even up to nearly 90%:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped...droelectricity
This is pretty much the same as large scale battery systems for round-trip efficiency, when you factor in losses for charging, inverters, whole-of-life charge capacity degradation, etc - especially when they are run at high currents, as they would be in a grid installation scenario.
Importantly, pumped-storage hydro can maintain that efficiency over many, many years of continuous operation, with no loss of capacity as they "age". Pumped-storage is already demonstrated to much higher capacity than any battery installation - e.g. Wivenhoe Pumped Storage in SE Qld has a storage capacity of around 5 GW.hr (500 MW for 10 hours continuous running), which it can store and release on a 24-hour cycle. Contrast that with the SA Tesla battery (currently, the world's biggest battery), which has a capacity of 0.13 GW.hr (100 MW for a bit over an hour).
Batteries are an important part of a renewable energy future, but if you want a really big "battery", pumped-storage hydro is hard to beat.