UNSW study reveals potential for farm dams as renewables storage

Led by UNSW and with researchers from Deakin University and the University of Technology Sydney, the study looked at agricultural reservoirs to store excess solar generated energy and would rely on having a high, and low-lying reservoir to transfer energy between.

UNSW lead author Dr Nicholas Gilmore said cost effective storage solutions were needed at all levels to transition to low-carbon power like wind and solar.

"We thought - if you're geographically fortunate to have two significant water volumes separated with sufficient elevation, you might have the potential to have your own hydro energy storage system," Dr Gilmore said.

"We identified tens of thousands of these potential sites where micro-pumped hydro energy storage systems could be installed without undertaking costly reservoir construction.

"That's thousands of households that could potentially increase their solar usage, saving money on their energy bills, and reducing their carbon footprint."

To be effective, energy excess would be stored by pumping water into the uphill reservoir and released through a turbine generator creating electricity as water leads into the lower reservoir and utilising existing farm dams would alleviate costs of building new dams form scratch.

Researchers found over 30,000 water sites could be used as hydro energy storage sites and UNSW senior lecturer and co-author Dr Thomas Britz said they used a graph theory algorithm to connect what would be the best dam configurations.

"If you have a lot of dams in close proximity, it's not viable to link them up in every combination," Dr Britz said.