Around 7 percent of Australia's electricity and 60 percent of its renewable energy comes from hydro electricity. Australia's biggest and best known hydro electricity generator is the Snowy Mountains Scheme and it supplies just over 3 percent of Australia's electricity.Energy from the moving water falls from a high altitude at high velocity over a turbine. The turbine blades spin a generator which produces electricity.Some hydropower plants have pumped storage. This typically occurs at night when power demand is low and is where some of the power supplied by a generator is utilized to move fallen water from a reservoir at the lower height back to a high altitude. When the water reaches the high-energy point and is stored, ready to be released again to a lower level the next day.
The water in high-altitude reservoirs possess gravitational potential energy due to being at a certain height from the centre of the earth. The machinery includes a generator which gets energy from the turbine. The moving water rotates the turbine and the resulting energy is transferred to the generator, which then produces electric power. As at 2018 Hydro power supplied 35.2% of Australia's renewable electricity generation or 7.5% of Australia's total electricity generation.
Water power is Australia's oldest and most established green energy source. It produces less or no harmful gases that degrade the environment, unlike conventional energy sources such as fossil fuels. Possible disadvantages of hydroelectric power include the adjoining area of water reservoirs accumulating sediments.