Water and power in the Hunter Valley

The latest drought map shows that the catchment areas of the Hunter region’s dams such as Grahamstown Dam are suffering from drought (if not intense conditions). Gramahstown Dam is located on the border of Dungog and Port Stephens in the map below with its catchment stretching north, drained by the Williams River (the intense drought area).

It is an interesting time, therefore, to be discussing the potential construction of two coal-fired power stations (1000MW capacity each) in Kurri Kurri, located 36km west of Grahamstown.

Some calculations

The new power stations would represent a 9% increase in total coal generation in Australia.

The freshwater requirements of different coal-fired power station technologies with and without Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) are shown below.

Interestingly, installing CCS increase the water water requirements substantially.

CCS = less emissions but higher water use?

The water requirements of the new generation are shown in the table below.

In context, the Hunter Water Corporation supplied 73,196ML of water to the region in 2017-18.

So the water requirements of the new power generation represent a 18% to 25% increase in water demand.

If there is insufficient water storage available then new storage will have to be built. But new infrastructure may not resolve the drought situation so the water will have to diverted from existing uses.

Is there another power generation technology that doesn’t use water?