Blog

Our insights on the renewable energy industry and its impacts on the community and environment.

Comparing carbon-free baseload to carbon-free baseload

Published November 22, 2024

The nuclear debate here in Australia lacks fair comparison to other competing technologies. It includes figures that are not applicable in the Australian context and omissions, including fair comparisons with alternative technologies. To address some of these issues, Sunshine Hydro developed the following submission to the ‘Inquiry into nuclear power generation in Australia’. We were pleased to present our position at one of the live hearings and to be quoted in the Courier Mail last weekend.

The hippie who couldn’t say “impossible”

Published September 18, 2024

Today is 18 September 2024 and that’s an important date for Sunshine Hydro. Today, I and the team at Sunshine Hydro will remember my first visit to Wivenhoe Power Station ten years ago with gratitude, and celebrate the many ways we have made the impossible possible.

Our response to the proposed Clean Hydrogen Rules

Published July 12, 2024

Following the announcement of $2/kg Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive (HPTI), the Treasury ran a public consultation about the scheme. As often is the case, the devil is in the detail and the careful planning of this subsidy is paramount to avoid unintended adverse consequences to the Australian energy transition and leakage of subsidies outside of Australian borders.

An untold story about nuclear power

Published May 7, 2024

There’s been lots of discussion lately about nuclear power and its role in a future Australian grid. In a recent Investor Q&A Webinar for our equity crowdfunding campaign on Birchal, we were asked if we see nuclear power as a threat to our Superhybrid™ business model. That question inspired me to write this blog.

Our story so far

Published January 29, 2024

The first tender shoots of the idea for this company started when I was living in a sustainable community. The community needed energy storage and I started looking at how that might be done. First I envisaged a micro pumped hydro station. However, the more I explored these ideas, the bigger things became and the possibilities of what could be achieved increased. It soon became clear that I needed a company with like-minded individuals to carry this forward, and so Sunshine Hydro was born.

Energy Transition learning from the Yellowstone Wolves

Published November 20, 2023

Can we learn from the Yellowstone Wolves about the value of a keystone species on its ecosystem.

Reconciliation in Action

Published October 9, 2023

In an era where public sentiment leans heavily toward acknowledging First Nations peoples and righting historical wrongs, the question that often emerges is: "What can businesses do to make a tangible difference?" While public support for indigenous communities is high on both sides of the referendum debate, concrete steps and real actions are what matter.

The Case for Ultra-Deep e-Methanol Storage

Published August 31, 2023

While we can’t predict what will cause the next energy crisis, we can be quite confident that one will arise, probably rather sooner than later. Most people will not expect it to happen until it does and will call it “unprecedented” – the new favourite word as record weather events and natural disasters occur weekly in global news.

Community is why we are in business

Published October 20, 2022

Technology and economics as ‘how’ we will bring our vision to life. Community and environment are ‘why’ we will bring it to life. Or, more broadly, ‘why’ we are in business. Like in all organisations, ‘why’ is where the passion lies.

The carbon-free base load that isn’t nuclear

Published August 30, 2022

The world is facing a perfect storm with scarcity driving up fossil fuel prices just as we need to urgently address our carbon emission targets. So it’s not surprising a debate has developed in Australia about the pros and cons of nuclear power.

Sunshine Hydro hits the Energy Trifecta: Reliable, Cheap and Green

Published June 7, 2022

In this article, we model the expected performance of a Superhybrid against the combined output of a coal-powered turbine at Liddell Power Station and the gas-powered Colongra Power Station during the the May 2021 outage at Calide.

How Sunshine Hydro can put Downward Pressure on Electricity Prices

Published May 25, 2022

Electricity spot prices are more than double where they were 12 months ago according to AEMO’s quarterly energy dynamics report.

How to be Carbon Neutral in Real Time

Published February 3, 2022

Google is taking action to properly account for the carbon used by its data centres around the world. This is how Google describes their goal.

The Case for Deep Storage

Published November 12, 2021

Hydro Tasmania gets it when it comes to deep storage — well, kind of, and we’ll get to that later. But they do certainly understand one of the key values of deep storage. In a paper prepared by Tas Hydro for ARENA, they find that...

Strathclyde University Discussion Paper on Pumped Hydro

Published November 1, 2021

The case for pumped hydro in the UK energy mix is put in this paper recently released by the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. The authors draw three main conclusions...

Pumped Hydro Plants one of Cheapest Sources of Electricity

Published November 1, 2021

Here’s some useful data from Acciona about pumped hydro however they still talk about pumped hydro as though it will be used to match demand peaks...

‘Get Used to Blackouts’ — Warning from IHA Congress

Published November 1, 2021

An International Government-led coalition calls for urgent action on pumped storage hydropower. ‘Get used to blackouts’ or risk reverting to fossil fuels is the warning, unless the world scales up investment in water batteries to support fast-growing solar and wind power...