Bushfire Season is a natural part of the Australian annual cycle. Although a misnomer – the drier months fall at different parts of the year depending on the region – for thousands of years, these grass and shrub fires have erupted and died away. But year upon year, changes in the climate have nudged and then jolted this most delicate of natural phenomena.

This culminated in the 2019/20 season being dubbed ‘Black Summer’, the devastation from which killed or displaced more than three billion animals. The expense of saving 65% of these critical species has been estimated at $16 billion per year for 30 years.

In the years since the Black Summer, Australia has adopted some of the most ambitious targets anywhere for renewable energy generation. The 2022 Climate Change Act references targets 82% of electricity production to be from renewable sources by 2030, up from 27% in 2023. To achieve this, the country’s ‘Capacity Investment Scheme aims to deliver an additional 32GW of installed capacity by 2030.

An intermittent problem

Although an ambitious target, even for a country blessed with renewable potential, building out generation infrastructure is only part of the problem. The nature of renewables presents a challenge previously unknown to the Australian grid – intermittency.

Traditionally focused on coal, Australian generation has historically enjoyed an abundant and reliable energy source and has not needed to diversify. This presents a problem as it weans itself off fossil fuels and directly into intermittent renewables. If the sun is not shining or the wind not blowing – at least not enough – a grid needs to rely upon firm power, such as nuclear or fossil fuels, interconnection with other grids, or otherwise energy storage. Unlike the diverse grids of the West European or North American nations, Australia currently has access to none of these. It also has recent experience with mass power cuts. Its population will not tolerate a risky transition. 

Coal plants may be reliable and quick to fire up. But in a world shifting away from coal, Australia needs to find a way to compensate for this loss of reliability. Its only option is storage. Storage, that is, at grid scale. 

And while battery technology is improving, the worldwide transition to renewables has shunted a long-established technology into a position of never-before-seen importance: pumped storage.

A rising tide

Pumped storage involves expending energy to pump water through tunnels or pipes from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir. This is done at times of low demand or energy cost, or gradually over a long period, the water is then released to turn generators and produce electricity at times of high demand. 

However, pumped storage has never been as popular as might be expected. The differential in energy prices would net a profit, but the capital investment to build such a project is substantial. Yet, the modern grid is starting to look very different to previous decades.

“It solves an issue that probably was not there five or 10 years ago,” says Sebastien Mousseau, Global Lead for Power and Renewables in AtkinsRéalis. “Renewables are putting a complexity into the grid that we didn’t have: intermittency.”

Although battery developments may be firmly in the public consciousness, for those with a passing familiarity with the benefits of tunnelling and underground construction, pumped storage has always been the darling of the energy storage space. 

“It has a number of advantages, one is round trip efficiency which can be assumed to be 80%,” says Vinod Batta, Global Lead for Hydro and Pumped Hydro within AtkinsRéalis, also based in Canada. “Another aspect is the scale it is built at, and the length of time energy can be stored for.”

Often start-up companies and battery advocates boast of power, while ignoring energy. Watts, not Watt-hours, or Joules. A storage device could power Sydney or Toronto for a few seconds, boasting an impressive Wattage, but fail as serious grid storage. Most markets look at 8-hour coverage, for example but Australia is looking at full 24-hour supply.

This kind of storage also does not worry about degradation. Batteries lose capacity over time, while tunnels and hydropower have working lives in the centuries… however, in traditional ROI calculations, which look at 30–40-year periods, this is not accounted for. Further, hydropower project lifespans last into the centuries.

“Pumped hydro project has several what we call as ancillary benefits: quick start is one of them, wherein it provides additional inertia to the system for a restart.”

Batta says that governments and power companies have not had the push to bring pumped storage, and so grid resilience, to market. But that renewables will make it happen. 

“They will be pushed right now. I think we are losing time. Net zero targets are in front of us. Renewables have become so cheap solar is like, three cents or two cents per kilowatt hour. And with so much penetration of solar and wind, I think they will have no choice but to put [in] grid scale storage. And then everyone will scramble to put it in.”

So, what is the potential for pumped storage in Australia? In the modern context, pumped storage does not actually need to be attached to a hydropower project, and many defunct mining sites are attractive. Added to this Australia does have the topography and the growing energy concerns to enable the growth of this sector.

Ultimately, this transition is in progress, it is happening one way or another, and Australia is taking the responsible approach to pair renewables with grid storage. And while pumped grid storage is in commission elsewhere, notably India, North America and Europe, the sector is expecting a significant uptick in demand.

A global race

“Within the context of Australia, it’s important that that energy storage solution is adjacent to clean energy generation in the form of wind or solar,” says Tom Hasker, CEO for Australia and New Zealand within AtkinsRéalis. “And that has been taken into consideration when the renewable energy zones have been identified by the state and federal governments within Australia. So, there is opportunity for pumped hydro energy storage. And I think I’m confident that the market will take up that opportunity.

Hasker doesn’t see an Australia blanketed with pumped hydro schemes, although a great many are being contemplated at the moment. He expects that they will be confined to identified clean energy zones.

My view is that there’s potential for four to five pumped hydro schemes to get up in Australia within this current cycle,” says Hasker. “But there’s certainly more than that in the market at the moment, with some extent that’ll also depend on the mix of others energy, long duration and energy storage solutions.”

But it is not just the structure of a new, renewable energy industry that Australia must contend with. It has entered into a global race. One that many countries do not yet realise they have entered. A race to generate and attract engineering talent. Australian industry, if not perhaps its populace and policymakers has embraced the sheer scale of the challenge facing it.

This is not a problem facing only Australia. And Mousseau says that the energy transition will run into a bottleneck: the human component,”

 I cannot speak for all countries, but I can speak for Canada. I’m in the province of Quebec. Quebec needs to double the number of engineers we have within 10 years.  That’s 60,000 more engineers. And in a province of around 10 million people. I’m sure that when you go in other countries, the demography is not good. And the needs for all this infrastructure is just growing. So, we’re going to need more engineers. What are we doing about that?”

And in this race for talent, the energy sector needs to make its case to young engineers.

“I think the energy sector, globally is probably one of the fastest evolving industries. And I’m not just talking about the industry supporting the physical environment around constructing these assets. I’m talking around funding ownership, technology, as well as engineering around construction and building physical infrastructure. So, as we work to decarbonise our generation sources. We’re also looking to transition things like cars and mobility to clean energy sources, we’re looking to transition manufacturing and heavy industry to clean energy sources.

“I can’t see how the energy industry can’t be considered probably one of the greatest opportunities in that space.”