Mr. Paul Blount:

I agree with all that. There are a lot of planning challenges associated with a pumped-hydro project but if someone can develop it and it provides a good solution, it should compete in the auction. Regarding the innovations in that space, we would have had conversations developing a high-density pumped hydro where they basically add minerals to the water to increase the density. If you can double the density of the fluid, you can effectively get twice as much energy for the same project which is quite an interesting innovation in the pumped-hydro space. There were other countries looking at disused mine shafts. I actually spoke to the two of those companies and put them together, so that you could have the disused mine shaft with the high-density fluid. It is really important to incentivise the market to keep innovating, keep pushing the boundaries and developing the best solutions and then let everyone compete on a fair and equal basis. Every storage technology will have its own unique challenges in getting it to the starting gate of an auction but you can probably leave those development challenges with the developers to take those risks and place their bets. What you want is when they get to the point of having a project, that is ready to bid into the auction, they know it is a fair competition and if they provide the best solutions, they win. That is just a little bit more colour on the pumped hydro. I do not think it is a doubt internationally. I know in Scotland there are some big projects being developed. SSE Renewables has got planning for large pumped-hydro projects in Scotland but it is very location-specific. It is not easy to distribute it around the grid and solve all network problems. That is not to say you could not have a small number of projects that would bring benefits to the system.