Australia to build world’s biggest pumped storage hydropower plant

Queensland is planning to build two massive pumped hydro facilities, including one on the state’s midcoast which is set to provide 5 GW of storage – enough to supply half of Queensland’s entire energy needs, Report informs referring to pv magazine.

The 2 GW Borumba Pumped Hydro project near Brisbane has been on the cards for some time and is slated for completion by 2030.

The scale of the bigger facility, called the Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project, has only been revealed today.

Dubbing it the “battery of the north,” Premier Palaszczuk said: “it will be the largest pumped hydro energy storage in the world, with 5 gigawatts of 24-hour storage and the potential for stage 1 to be completed by 2032.”

She said the preferred site for the project is 70 kilometers west of Mackay, north of Gladstone. Palaszczuk emphasised the need for storage in the transition to a renewable energy system. “With climate change there will be more unseasonal rain and other weather events that impact on the reliability of renewables,” she said.

“We will maintain majority public ownership of generation and 100% public ownership of transmission and distribution,” Queensland’s Minister for Energy, Renewables and Hydrogen Mick de Brenni added.