even in Tasmania which has lots of water in places and LOTS of existing infrastructure for hydro in place and working - to construct pumping is a very very very large outlay with doubtful outcomes.
I have felt for quite a while that I am so glad I don't have to make any long term decisions on power infrastructure atm - because it's a political, economic, technological nightmare time in history - and, I have to say, I do have sympathy for any governments that stuff it up or delay decisions
why?
because we are in a technological fast forward at 10 speed time in history
the times to build coal or fossil fuel generation are long - big money and time commitments -
ditto nuclear
wind and solar are quicker and probably cheaper - but, nowhere near as reliable - in fact, the latest report for wind is dismal
right at the same time - we have heaps of 'potential' technologies that are just theoretical - and probably will never happen - but, some will - and, there is just so much research going on into new things that it is almost odds on that something will come out of the box in the next 10 years - certainly 20 that will blow away everything we know about right atm.
We still have Lockheed Martin saying that they will have fusion commercial - as far as I know they haven't retracted that - they are saying it won't be as small and instead of 20 tons it might be 2000 tons - but, although that would take it out of the equation for small mobile applications - it sure wouldn't take it out of the equation for large operations fixed - or even big ships
which would just change the whole game overnight at a guess --
to me - that makes decisions that involve multi billion dollar bills and commitments with time scales of decades - very difficult to make - they are hard decisions at the best of times - but, in this time - wow - glad it's not me.
