With the era of accessible fossil fuels quickly coming to an end it is important that research is conducted into viable more sustainable future energy alternatives one of which is sustainable pumped hydro electric generation. For a sustainable future it is pertinent to investigate the feasibility of potential alternatives before significant investment is contributed to a potentially doomed project.
This project was developed to investigate the feasibility of a particular proposal, centred on sustainable pumped hydroelectricity more specifically pumped hydro powered by either solar, wind or a combination of both energy types. A three stage plan was incorporated to find the proposal with the most potential, develop a conceptual design with civil scope for this proposal and then compare it to the existing system to evaluate whether the proposed system was feasible or not.
The investigations concluded that while the proposed project was physically possible in regards to constructing foundations to overcome overturning moments and implementing the required infrastructure it was economically expensive and too impractical to be considered feasible. It is impractical to invest somewhere in the vicinity of a billion dollars to upgrade a system that will not provide any economic benefit for many years to come. Renewable energy is simply not reliable enough at the current point in time to justify such a substantial economic commitment. It would also take considerable effort to incorporate the existing infrastructure as the two systems do not mesh smoothly. While the proposed project would bring about a number of beneficial aspects such as greener more sustainable energy generation method and a more sustainable future it is currently not feasible
