Australia has many potential sites for pumped hydro energy storage (PHES). The initial survey found about 22,000 sites – the State and Territory breakdown is shown in the document. Each site has an energy storage potential between 1 and 200 Gigawatt hours (GWh).
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Australia has many potential sites for pumped hydro energy storage (PHES). In our initial survey, we have found about 22,000 sites – the State and Territory breakdown is shown in the table below. Each site has an energy storage potential between 1 and 200 Gigawatt hours (GWh).
The sites identified so far have a combined energy storage potential of around 67,000 GWh. To put this into perspective, to transition to a 100 per cent renewable electricity system 450 GWh of PHES storage would be needed. The potential PHES resource is almost 150 times more than required. Developers can afford to be choosy since only about 20 sites (the best 0.1% of sites) would be required to support a 100% renewable electricity grid.
