Walpole hydroelectric storage project receives $2 million in funding to provide power source for town

A renewable energy company has received a multi-million-dollar State Government funding boost to develop a hydro-energy station on a farm near Walpole to provide a new power source for the town which has been plagued with energy issues. Power Research and Development will build a 1.5MW pumped hydroelectric storage plant on a property about 14km out of Walpole to store 30MWh of power. The project — billed as a “world-first” —will involve the construction of two dams on the property, one at a high elevation and one at a lower elevation. A hydropump will work by using renewable solar power or electricity supply when it is cheap in the wholesale market to pump water from the lower dam to the upper dam where it is stored as kinetic energy. Then, when the power supply is expensive or there is a shortage of renewable energy, the water will run from the top dam to the bottom, running the pump in reverse and sending back into the grid. PRD founder and chief executive Colin Stonehouse said the project would provide a “really, really important” alternate source of power for Walpole, which he said Western Power had identified as having a “pressing need” for power support. “The power line (that supplies Walpole) is over 100km long and it runs through karri forest. . . at different times of year you can get storms come through and strong winds and so forth,” Mr Stonehouse said. “The power line is out of service on average about 12 times a year, and if that’s supplying your business, or house, and you live in Walpole, that’s a terrible inconvenience. “Effectively when the power line is out, then we can continue to supply power to the town of Walpole. “There’s a whole lot of really important elements of community life that need that power and we can keep the power on, certainly for a large number of those occurrences that it would otherwise be without power.” Joe Burton — a real estate agent and well-known football figure in the region — owns the beef farm the PRD project will be built on. Mr Burton said he was immediately interested in the hydropower plant when the company approached him. “I’ve lived in Walpole all my life, and we’ve had a lot of problems with power supply in the past, for various reasons,” Mr Burton said. “Sometimes there’s just not enough power, other times there’s breakdowns further back towards Albany or Denmark and once they go off we go off. “We’re on the end of the power grid so anyone that breaks down between us and Albany or Perth, we usually go off too.” Mr Burton said the plant was originally planned to be built on wetlands on the farm, which he said would give the plant a natural water source. But, because the area had been identified as a potential habitat for a rare frog species, it had to be moved to another area of the farm, delaying the start of construction. “The project is scheduled to go ahead, but its not going to go ahead in the best spot for the project — because what’s going to happen is they’re going to have to pump water into the bottom dam, and then pump water into the top dam,” Mr Burton said. “It’s just not the most natural thing to happen there.” On Friday, the State Government announced a commitment of $2m in funding for the PRD project with the working title ‘Pumped-up Walpole’. Mr Stonehouse said the grant would fund the whole project and allow for the addition of solar panels that would sit on the water surface of the lower dam. “While the grant’s not specifically for that element of it, by having the grant we can optimise the project and that’s a really important element of it,” he said. “So effectively we can use that solar power to a large degree to pump the water from the lower dam to the upper dam, and when we want the electricity later we are effectively recovering renewable energy from our solar at the time that the grid actually needs it rather than just when the sun’s shining.” Mr Stonehouse said construction of the plant would start in the next month, and is expected to be completed by June 2023. A community meeting will be held from 12-1.30pm on April 21 at the Walpole Community Hall for residents to hear more about the project.