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”.
This is OT, not related to Tassie dams and but to the Perth dams. “Climate Change, the All-Purpose Excuse and Villain” 8Jul21 Frank Batini
Thanks Bob for that great article by Frank Batini.
Unfortunately, it seems that our possible governments of all persuasions, for different reasons – all irrational but some much more-so than others – will no longer continue with coal fired power stations and are unlikely to indulge in nuclear even in the medium term.
It would seem then, in order to provide some offset to the synchronous power lost to the East Coast part of the national grid from coal-plant shut-downs, they will likely indulge in hugely high cost hydro power projects (Snowy 2.0, Tassie-link, etc), as regardless of how much over the odds they pay for such, (until power prices rocket or the environmentalists turn against it) hydro is politically much more acceptable to the ignorant public than coal.
IMHO NSW & Vic Hydro storages, except for short periods and except in periods of ample rain, are too small to be considered capable of taking up generation deficits from closing coal fired generation. Greens also oppose gas fired generation but I am not aware of any proposals on a scale to replace the loss of generation from closing coal. Both NSW & Vic have impediments to gas exploration or vital gas pipelines that make gas supply a worse problem than it should be.
Right now Hydro dam levels at Tantangara, Eucumbene, Jindabyne could all use prolonged rain.
I have blogged in Dec 2017 that Snowy 2.0 will be an expensive dog.
To return to Basslink – Tasfintalk blogged on 20April2018 [ With all the talk about a second Basslink one would have expected to have a clear picture of the costs and benefits of the first interconnector. Surely if you’re buying another of the same, one of the determining factors would be how the first has performed? Has it worked as planned? The short answer is no. It’s been a costly voyage into the unknown.]
Costly voyage into the unknown sums up Australia in 2020-2021 too.
Scomo has no money.
He “””uses””” our money.
I don’t want to fund another Bass Strait link because numerous idiots believe CO2 is nasty AND they further incorrectly believe that the majority of CO2 increase is man made.
When will our nation wake up and realize that “””renewable””” energy subsidies in their many hideous forms are total wastes of money