ABC reports Dams are near capacity across New South Wales, with authorities monitoring flood risks and rain forecast – farmers are wanting water entitlements to grow summer crops. Bureaucracies have been anti-dams for yonks. The NSW Water Minister reflects this. I hope farmers get the water they need for summer crops. But my blog headline says what is the certainty.
Monthly Archives: July 2021
Should ScoMo help Tassie pay for Marinus?
Marinus is the glam name given to the proposed 2nd Bass St undersea electricity cable between Tasmania & Victoria with a total capacity of 1500MW. I see they propose two stages of 750MW and note the existing Basslink now near 20 years old is rated at 500MW. The well informed Tasmanian blog Tasfintalk is critical of Marinus and asks a great question – Who’s picking up the tab for Marinus? – and refers to “Father Christmas” as a possible candidate to pay the Lions Share of the no doubt horrendous cost of Marinus. Tasfintalk mentions the existing undersea cable Basslink and I have commented previously on Basslink.
As my headline indicates Australia only has one Father Christmas for now and that is our PM Scott Morrison who did partially annoint the Marinus project in Feb2019.
The Tasfintalk article makes a good case of various points for Australian(and Tasmanian)taxpayers to be kept well clear of the risky Marinus project.
Marinus is an addon to the 2018 Battery of the Nation pumped hydro concept that Tassie Hydro cobbled together after PM Turnbull launched Snowy 2.0. I have also blogged on the over-hyped Battery of the Nation project.
To see these Tasmanian Hydro schemes in better perspective it is important to realize the annual scale of the NEM in 2019 was 205,000GWh (Covid has changed NEM usage and prices post 2019). OpenNem shows the 5 years 2015 to 2019 averaged 204,733GWh demand. Alongside that the Tasmanian imports for those 5 years were 1,173GWh or 0.57% and exports were 1,022GWh or 0.5% of NEM demand. Compared to the scale of the mainland NEM Tasmanian Hydro is a very minor player and the Federal Gov should leave Battery of the Nation and Marinus to be funded by Tasmania or non-Govt companies. 
It is interesting to look at the chart of Tassie Hydro storage levels from data published weekly. For larger chart.
Basslink failed 21Dec2015 and was not repaired until June2016 and Tasmania was greatly assisted by all time record cool season rain in 2016. This caused their dam levels to recover much more rapidly than if 2016 had only see average rain.
However as the chart shows storages have been in a below average zone around 40% to the present day. So the history is not shouting that Tasmania has for example “surplus dam storages that are spilling to waste”.