It has been suggested Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit could get a second life as a hydro dam.Picture: KCGM
WA could become a renewable energy powerhouse while exporting more of its lucrative gas to Asia if it adopted an ambitious Federal Government-backed plan to build new dams throughout the State.
Andrew Blakers, professor of engineering at the Australian National University, will today release a study funded by the Government’s renewable energy agency which shows there are almost 4000 sites in WA — 3000 of them in the Kimberley — suitable for new reservoirs that could be built for pumped hydro electricity storage.
Professor Blakers said the reservoirs would be like “oversized farm dams”, but had the potential to transform the country’s energy mix, with 22,000 sites identified nationally.
He said the Pilbara also had many suitable sites for the new closed-loop reservoir systems which could be linked with wind and solar energy production to make the region “a world-scale renewable energy precinct”.
“This means that instead of shipping iron ore off to China and Japan we could use local wind and solar to reduce the iron oxide to iron and ship the iron instead,” Professor Blakers said.
“It makes no sense to burn gas in WA for electricity when you can sell it for a much higher price in Asian export markets.”
He said some of the biggest sites identified by his research team were at existing mines, and suggested that the Kalgoorlie Super Pit “could have a wonderful second life as a pumped hydro system” when it eventually closed.
