Does Snowy 2.0 still have a place in a world of batteries? - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The ABC has run a story questioning whether Snowy 2.0, the 350 MW pumped-hydro scheme under construction in the Snowy Mountains, remains justified as battery costs fall and deployment accelerates. The piece tests the premise that fast, cheap batteries might substitute for long-duration storage, reducing the case for the A$10 billion project.

Where this fits

This cuts to the heart of the cost problem in an all-renewables grid. Snowy 2.0 exists because solar and wind are weather-dependent: the scheme would store surplus renewable energy and release it when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Batteries excel at four-hour response; they are hopeless at week-long storage when a high-pressure system kills both wind and solar across the eastern seaboard. Snowy 2.0 was the answer to that gap. If the article suggests batteries have solved it, the whole-system cost arithmetic changes. If they have not, Snowy 2.0 remains essential firming plant, and the cost of a renewables-only grid includes both the battery spend and the pump-storage spend. The question is whether Australia is counting both.

What it means

Australia is building towards a grid with no firm, dispatchable power. If batteries cannot store energy reliably for days, and Snowy 2.0 is deemed optional, the grid will lean harder on gas backup during extended calm periods. That locks in fossil-fuel infrastructure for decades and makes the grid vulnerable to gas-price shocks and supply disruption. A nuclear plant, running at capacity factor above 90 percent, would supply the firm baseload that neither solar nor batteries can provide, and would do it at lower emissions and without sovereign dependence on China's battery supply chain.