Stuart Smith: A Minister Committed to Her Silver Bullet

A silver bullet solution is hard to resist: it is easy to promote and potentially the stuff that legacies are made of. Last week we saw Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods succumb to this, when she doubled down on the Lake Onslow Pumped Hydro Scheme, despite the expected build cost quadrupling.

The potential for pumped hydro at Lake Onslow in the event of a dry year was first identified by Waikato University Professor Earl Bardsley, in 2002. An electricity dry year usually lasts around four months and comes to a head in the colder months when most of the precipitation is locked up as snow and ice and not available to replenish our hydro lakes. Therefore, Lake Onslow was initially seen as a potential solution.