Biggest hydro plant in 25 years Science & nature The Australian

A NEW hydro-electric power station - the biggest built in mainland Australia in 25 years - will supply up to 122,000 homes during summer peak hours as part of Victoria's push for more renewable energy.
Power company AGL has commissioned the $230million, 140-megawatt plant at Bogong Village, near the Falls Creek ski resort in the state's northeast, but no new dam is required.
The company says the power station - working with the hydro plant at Dartmouth - will provide enough power for 122,000 homes at peak operation and will prevent the release of more than 185,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year.
The Bogong station will supply power mainly during summer afternoon peaks in demand, when airconditioners and industry are both in operation.
AGL says construction will start next month and is expected to be finished in 2010.
The most recent large hydroelectric power station to be built on the mainland was the 150MW Dartmouth project, also in the Victorian Alps, which was finished in 1981. A bigger plant was commissioned at Lake Burbury in Tasmania in 1992.
Most of the new plant - the third-biggest in Victoria behind McKay Creek and Dartmouth - will be built underground. It will use water from the existing Rocky Valley Dam.
A 6.5km tunnel will take the overflow from the existing McKay Creek power station down to Bogong Village, where it will be put through turbines and released into nearby Lake Guy.
The project will restore the Pretty Valley branch of the East Kiewa River - which floods alarmingly when McKay Creek is in use - to its natural flow.
The plant will be built in a picturesque forest on the slopes of the Victorian Alps.
But Alpine Shire mayor Jan Vonarx said the project had not attracted any opposition because it was environmentally sound and would generate 200 jobs. "We are definitely in favour of it. It's a fantastic project," she said.
AGL managing director and chief executive Paul Anthony said the project was a major opportunity and would mean almost 50 per cent of the company's output would be generated from renewable resources.
"Bogong is one of the last opportunities anywhere in Australia to construct a large-scale fast-start fully discretionary hydro peaking generation plant," he said.
The Victorian Government has credited its mandatory 10 per cent renewable energy target - announced in July - with being the catalyst for several new windfarms as well as the Bogong plant. Premier Steve Bracks said the power station would not have been built without the target and that it would be a major part of the Government's push to cut 27million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.
The state Government claims the scheme - under which retailers must get 10 per cent of their power from renewable sources - will drive up household power bills by just $10 a year but has so far refused to release the study that produced this figure.
But Opposition energy spokesman Phil Davis, who opposes the scheme, said it would cost jobs and drive up power bills by more than $60 a year.
He welcomed the new Bogong power station but said the renewable energy target had nothing to do with its viability and that the government subsidy provided under the scheme was too small to have any significant bearing on the investment decision.