Queensland

Australians know their country is rightly counted in the first rank of technological capability.  We are world leaders in a large number of industries and our ideas have shaped the world.  We have overcome great difficulties to become one of the principal suppliers of food to the entire world but now we must face and overcome the huge challenge of climate change which threatens to throw us, our unique environment and agricultural production capabilities into an endless series of droughts.  To overcome this life threatening/altering challenge, we must act now to provide sufficient hydroelectric recharge pumping facilities to underpin the green energy production future.  One of the main components we lack in our ability to meet the challenges ahead is an Australian pipe manufacturer with the installed capability to produce ultra large diameter pipes.  There are a number of ultra large diameter pipe manufacturers around the world, and we must either invite them in to set up shop or develop technology of our own.  With ultra large diameter pipelines we can efficiently move water over thousands of kilometres.

The catchments of the river systems in Queensland have been cleared of their native vegetation and because of this they flood faster and more often than they once did.  The impact of these flood waters on the Great Barrier Reef has been devastating.  To save the Reef we need to dam the rivers to cure many of the ills of the Great Barrier Reef.  We must ask ourselves, why is it that a place like Libya can find the will to construct a pipeline stretching more than 1000km across the mighty Sahara Desert to water its agriculture and cities, whilst we are plagued by drought.  There is no reason why we can’t move thousands of Gigalitres of water in pipes from one end of the continent to another - they just need to be ultra large diameter pipes.  If we are going to expand our agricultural production to meet world demand and rebuild our forests, we must build pipeline systems....  Queensland, with its abundant rainfall could be at the centre of a globally significant tree driven atmospheric carbon sequestration industry which could easily eclipse the riches and jobs generated by the mining industry.  The nylon and fibre reinforced pipes currently made by Future Pipe Industries can carry 350m head of pressure but there is scope to increase this pressure to 800m head with some small changes to the materials used to form them.  It is possible to manufacture pipes of +7m diameter and the State will need to lay down a 1000km main trunk line of 3 pipes to move +10,000 GL pa from one end of the State to the other.  Nylon pipes are far more durable than the concrete lined steel pipes currently manufactured in Australia.  With careful material selection the service life of the nylon pipe can be extended to more than 100 years and, what is more, at the end of the service period the nylon can be reprocessed and reinvigorated with little additional material to reform the pipelines.  We need new pipe technology in Australia.  We need modern materials to solve our water problems and to be freed from the technological constraints of the past.  Libya’s main pipelines are formed of spun reinforced concrete which is another older technology which we should not emulate, but the fact that they have been able to construct the system they have, with those cumbersome low pressure conrete pipes, is an engineering achievement that Australia should be inspired by.  The Libyan pipeline is rated as one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century, and we can do a lot better than that.  With hydroelectric recharge pumping Queensland could reduce its greenhouse emissions footprint by 70% within the next two decades standing on its head, and all we need do is build some new dams, install hydroelectric recharge pumping facilities to hold 15% of the entire energy grid, and construct some pipelines to move the water around.

The Reef Dams

The flood waters streaming from cleared agricultural lands in Queensland should be dammed before they can damage the Great Barrier Reef.  We have established a set of pathways for pipelines which could extend all the way down the east coast to reach as far as Newcastle in NSW.  With these pipelines in place, water can be shared and moved from flooded regions to drought afflicted areas easily.  The communities of North Queensland should not fear their water is being taken from them for there will be many years ahead where it is they who are in drought and waters from the southern regions is piped to their aid.  All Australian's want to see green energy brought into our electricity grids, but because of the variable nature of the energy produced by solar, wind and tidal production means, green energy producers are unable to offer the Base Load Certainty needed to displace fossil fuel burning power stations.  The only way to raise green energy production to true Base Load Certainty is with Hydroelectric Recharge Pumping installations, and Queensland has virtually none.  Hydroelectric recharge pumping is a form of battery system which operates on the following basic principals: have a first reservoir at a first lower elevation, and connect it by a pipeline to a second reservoir at a higher elevation; the pipeline includes a dual acting pump/turbine system which is used to pump water from the lower reservoir to the higher reservoir using off-peak or excess electricity; release the water from the higher reservoir back down into the lower reservoir through the pipeline and its turbine system to produce electricity when it is called for.  The overall efficiency of a typical hydroelectric recharge pumping installation is in excess of 80% making this form of battery system the most efficient system for storing large volumes of energy known to mankind.  With recharge pumping, green energy producers would no longer be at a disadvantage to fossil burning producers, and would, in fact, quickly put them out of business.  What is more we can use the technology to lift water from the seaboard side of the Great Dividing Range to our parched and dying interior regions.  The technology allows us to lift water back up into the hills from where it can be piped by gravity to almost all of our towns and businesses.  We can then use a modified paddy system to reforest our lands and do away with pump pressure stations providing mains pressure to our towns and agricultural water systems.

Lake Anne

Lake Anne, situated behind Mackay, could hold 20,000GL, and its principal function would be to serve as the main beam of the Queensland Strategic Water Reserve.  The recharge pumping dams we have situated above it could underpin the States’ entire energy grid for months on end, and provide the electricity to drive the pump systems and pipeline systems needed to fill it.  Lake Anne could be teaming with fish and all manner of birdlife.  It is a beautiful man made lake which if constructed properly would last like Hoover Dam for 1000 years.  We need it in place if we are going to save the Reef and be able to provide the water for reforestation.  It is an inexpensive very deep dam in a low evaporation area.  Lake Anne would provide a new tourist precinct taking pressure off the Reef and providing a large number of new employment opportunities.  With its slopes reforested it would be one of the most beautiful navigable bodies in the world and a jewel in the crown of Queensland.

The Marble Dams

The Blue Hills south of Lake Anne, near Gladstone, include recharge pumping facilities underpinning the long term strategic water reserves and recharge pumping hydroelectric capacities of the eastern grid of the Nation.  The inclusion of as much recharge pumping capacity as possible into the water system and electricity grid is required to provide the energy needed to motor water out of flooding systems into storage’s when flood events occur.  They are the battery service to green energy production and the capacitors at the ready to drive the massive pump systems when opportunity presents itself.  Every new man-made lake we put into the landscape is another habitat available for nature.  We need birdlife to fertilise our lands, but we have hewn down their habitats and drained their wetlands.  With dams we can restore to them what we have taken away.

QLD Southern Strategic Grid

All of the existing dam storage’s of Queensland can be linked together in a closed hydraulic circuit such that excess water from just about any location in the State can be moved to dry areas by gravity alone and so that flood spills from dams are a thing of the past.  Concerns associated with coldwater discharge from dams can easily be managed with floating discharge heads and warming ponds.

Darling Downs Irrigation

It is possible to turn the Darling Downs into an irrigation district with 1000’s of GL’s of water spilt down pipelines from Lake Anne.  This irrigation system could challenge the productivity of the MDB and create tens of thousands of new jobs.  The soils of the Darling Downs are some of the most fertile in the Nation.

Recharge Hydro

Hydro electric recharge pumping is a form of a super massive battery which relies of the weight of water in gravity.  A hydroelectric recharge pumping facility includes a upper reservoir and a lower reservoir linked together by a pipeline including a turbine which can also if spun in the opposite direction act as a pump.  The idea being to pump water uphill from the lower reservoir to the higher reservoir using cheap off-peak energy and where it is then stored for release on demand down the pipeline to drive the turbine and thus produce electricity.  The effort is not 100% efficient of course as there are losses associated with friction forces and other factors but these losses are not so large as to be a game breaker as they can be contained to under 20% with relative ease.  This means that a battery of +80% efficiency is created and the fact is there is no other battery known to man of the scale achievable with hydroelectric recharge pumping.  These are batteries we can build which will last hundreds of years and which can be called into play in times of disaster and dire need.