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Andrew Scanlon Environment and Sustainability Manager

Hydro Tasmania Drought and Climate Change. Andrew Scanlon Environment and Sustainability Manager. Tasmania, Australia. Hydro Tasmania Business Position. Australia’s largest renewable energy generator. Australia’s largest dam owner. Australia’s largest water manager.

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Andrew Scanlon Environment and Sustainability Manager

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  1. Hydro Tasmania Drought and Climate Change Andrew Scanlon Environment and Sustainability Manager

  2. Tasmania, Australia

  3. Hydro Tasmania Business Position • Australia’s largest renewable energy generator. • Australia’s largest dam owner. • Australia’s largest water manager. • One of Australia’s largest renewable energy developers.

  4. Hydro Tasmania’s Generating System • 29 small to medium size hydropower stations (2300 MW); • 70 MW of wind power with another 200 MW under construction or planned; • Two diesel-wind systems on each of two offshore islands; and • A gas-fired thermal power station (120 MW) and 3 gas turbines (105 MW).

  5. Two Very Large Storages Great Lake Storage Capacity = 3000 GL Lake Gordon Storage Capacity = 11000 GL or 22 Sydney Harbours

  6. LargeSeasonalStoragesAboveCascades LakeKing William - Central Tasmania

  7. Small-to-Medium Run-of-RiverPowerStations ClunyDam – South-eastern Tasmania

  8. A major drought occurred in the late 1960s – power rationing and low lake levels. Decision to provide thermal support – 240 MW thermal station commissioned in the early 1970s. Continued development of hydro system till fully developed in the 1990s. Coping with Drought (1)

  9. Connection to the mainland power grid in 2005 (600 MW DC link). Diversification into wind power. Conversion of thermal station to gas and addition of three gas turbines. Drought conditions have persisted since the late 1990s. Coping with Drought (2)

  10. Low lake levels, diminished downstream flows, and water quality problems present a range of environmental and social issues. These include: Environmental and Social Issues • Lake and river ecosystem stress; • Economic and social impacts on other users.

  11. Great Lake (1)

  12. Great Lake (2)

  13. 1040 1035 1030 1025 1020 NMOL 1015 Risk Bands and Monitoring

  14. Lagoonof Islands and Ouse River

  15. Alternative water source for downstream users. Biomanipulation pilot study – early 2007. Remediation of Ripple Canal – 2007-2009. Full-scale biomanipulation commences summer 2007-08. Investigation of options for new storages. Environmental Management - Lagoon of Islands

  16. Climate Change and Water Supply – Adaptation Options

  17. Hydro Tasmania is reliant on water inflows and meets a customer demand that is, in part, dependent on climate. Hydro Tasmania has a multiple-use water resource with requirements additional to generating electricity. Hydro Tasmania has significant fixed assets including 44 large dams. Sustainable management requires an ability to predict likely future trends. Climate Change – Hydro Tasmania

  18. High Variability in Inflow

  19. Climate Change – Looking Back

  20. Climate Change – Looking Forward • Climate change modelling study – CSIRO. • Focus on impact of climate change on Hydro Tasmania and Tasmania. • Better representation of Tasmania in modelling. • Identifying trends in rainfall, temperature, evaporation and wind. • Plan to implement outcomes into Hydro Tasmania models to estimate impacts to business.

  21. Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM) Grid (+topography) • Time step = 4 minutes • Grid size– 11km • 70 year simulation • 10 million time steps • 50 days on supercomputer • 110 Gb storage

  22. High Resolution Model Results • Tasmania is in a region of reduced climate change compared to the global average. • Climate change might be relatively moderate in Tasmania out to 2040; some warming and some change in rainfall patterns and winds. • Result uncertainty due to the use of a single emission scenario, but the scenarios do not diverge very much by 2040. • Some uncertainty from using a single rather than an ensemble of different global models.

  23. High Resolution Model Results - Rainfall On a seasonal basis there is increased winter and early spring rainfall in all catchments. There is a drying trend in the north east in the first half of the year, only partly compensated by increased rainfall later in the year. Annual rainfall is projected to increase by 7-11% in all catchments except in the South Esk, which decreases by around 8%. South Esk

  24. HydroTasmaniaInflowPrediction • Factor of 1.0 represents no change in inflows. • Factors <1.0 represents drying. • Factors >1.0 represents wetter. • Great Lake factors well below 1.0 and thus drying predicted. • Others have drier summers/autumns and wetter winters.

  25. Climate Change Conclusions • Strong evidence for a shift in inflows to drier summer/autumns and wetter winter/springs. • Future predictions are showing similar trends. • Potential significant reduction in annual/seasonal inflows in the central and easterly catchments. • These shifts in inflows will result in a change to future operations of Hydro Tasmania. • Probable Maximum Precipitation not examined (spillway capacity – dam safety issue).

  26. Future work with Antarctic CRC: Multiple emissions scenario. Multiple climate models. Outputs of future work: Rainfall trend estimates for modelling impact on Hydro generation. Temperature variations for electricity and agricultural sectors. Wind variability for wind farms and transmission authorities. Extreme weather events for flooding and planning considerations. Climate Change -- Future work

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