Replacing gas with low-cost, abundant long-duration pumped hydro in electricity systems
- 1School of Engineering, College of Systems and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia; Corresponding author
- 2School of Engineering, College of Systems and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
Abstract
Fossil gas is often considered essential for balancing solar and wind beyond 2050, despite its status as a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions. We evaluate seventeen institutional long-term energy plans and find that they skew toward fossil gas because they use temporal aggregation methods that strongly constrain storage cycling, overlook off-river pumped hydro potential, and ignore near-optimal transition pathways. In a post-2050 Australian grid case study, we find near-optimal 100% renewable solutions using an off-the-shelf “segmentation” method. In addition, we develop a planning model that rapidly evaluates millions of near-optimal solutions. We show that batteries and long-duration pumped hydro (48–160 h) can replace gas without incurring a cost penalty, and we stress the importance of energy volume cost (<USD 50 per kilowatt-hour), economic lifetime (∼75 years), and discount rate (≤3%, equivalent to natural monopolies) when modeling large-scale pumped hydro. Since most regions have sufficient 50–5,000 GW-hour pumped hydro options, adjusting modeling practices will help planners design 100% renewable grids using existing technologies.
Related
- Design, implementation and validation of a web-based dynamic simulation platform for pumped storage hydropower plant control systems
- Synchronously-pumped pulsed multimode Raman fiber laser
- 10-fs-level laser-to-RF timing jitter of a directly diode-pumped Ti:sapphire oscillator
- Semiconductor optical amplification of a diode-pumped 1-GHz Ti:sapphire oscillator
- All-PM supercontinuum source pumped by noise-like pulses from a figure-9 Yb-doped fiber laser
BibTeX
@article{weber2026replacing,
title = {{Replacing gas with low-cost, abundant long-duration pumped hydro in electricity systems}},
author = {Timothy Weber and Cheng Cheng and Harry Armstrong-Thawley and Kylie Catchpole and Andrew Blakers and Bin Lu and Jennifer Zhao and Anna Nadolny},
journal = {Cell Reports Physical Science},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.xcrp.2026.103523},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2026.103523},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Replacing gas with low-cost, abundant long-duration pumped hydro in electricity systems
AU - Timothy Weber
AU - Cheng Cheng
AU - Harry Armstrong-Thawley
AU - Kylie Catchpole
AU - Andrew Blakers
AU - Bin Lu
AU - Jennifer Zhao
AU - Anna Nadolny
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
JO - Cell Reports Physical Science
DO - 10.1016/j.xcrp.2026.103523
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2026.103523
AB - Fossil gas is often considered essential for balancing solar and wind beyond 2050, despite its status as a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions. We evaluate seventeen institutional long-term energy plans and find that they skew toward fossil gas because they use temporal aggregation methods that strongly constrain storage cycling, overlook off-river pumped hydro potential, and ignore near-optimal transition pathways. In a post-2050 Australian grid case study, we find near-optimal 100% renewable solutions using an off-the-shelf “segmentation” method. In addition, we develop a planning model that rapidly evaluates millions of near-optimal solutions. We show that batteries and long-duration pumped hydro (48–160 h) can replace gas without incurring a cost penalty, and we stress the importance of energy volume cost (<USD 50 per kilowatt-hour), economic lifetime (∼75 years), and discount rate (≤3%, equivalent to natural monopolies) when modeling large-scale pumped hydro. Since most regions have sufficient 50–5,000 GW-hour pumped hydro options, adjusting modeling practices will help planners design 100% renewable grids using existing technologies.
SN - 2666-3864
ER -