Snowy 2.0 Pumped Storage Power Station or Snowy Hydro 2.0 or simply Snowy 2.0 is a pumped-hydro battery megaproject in

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia. The

dispatchable generation Dispatchable generation refers to sources of electricity that can be programmed ''on demand'' at the request of power grid operators, according to market needs. Dispatchable generators may adjust their power output according to a request. Conven ...

project expands upon the original

Snowy Mountains Scheme The Snowy Mountains Scheme, also known as the Snowy Hydro or the Snowy scheme, is a hydroelectricity and irrigation in Australia, irrigation complex in south-east Australia. Near the border of New South Wales and Victoria (Australia), Victoria, ...

(ex post facto Snowy 1.0) connecting two existing dams through a underground tunnel and a new, underground pumped-hydro

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...

. It is expected to supply 2.2 gigawatts of capacity and about 350,000 megawatt-hours of large-scale storage to the

national electricity market The National Electricity Market (NEM) is an arrangement in Australia's electricity sector for the connection of the electricity transmission grids of the eastern and southern Australia states and territories to create a cross-state wholesale ele ...

. It is the largest

renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...

project under construction in Australia. It includes one of the largest and deepest cavern excavations ever undertaken. It also includes the longest tunnels (at 27 kilometres in length) of any pumped-hydro station ever built. It is designed for grid stabilization, to be a backup at times of

peak demand Peak demand on an electrical grid is the highest electrical power demand that has occurred over a specified time period (Gönen 2008). Peak demand is typically characterized as annual, daily or seasonal and has the unit of power. Peak demand, pe ...

, and for when solar and wind energy are not providing sufficient power. It provides valuable firming capability. Snowy Hydro acts like a giant

battery Battery or batterie most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source * Battery indicator, a device whic ...

by absorbing, storing, and dispatching energy. Snowy 2.0 can be "switched on" very quickly. The battery is designed to operate for up to 175 hours of temporary supply. It is Australia's largest energy project, estimated to cost 12 billion Australian dollars and projected to generate 10% of the nation's energy. The Australian grid will need about 660 GWh of storage by 2050. Claims that Snowy 2 offers more than half of this have been challenged. One analysis of actual storage capacity of Snowy 2.0 estimates capacity to be around 40 GWh when operating in full reticulation mode (no loss of water to river flows). Construction began in 2019. By 2023, AU$4.3 billion had been spent. Snowy 2.0 has been described as a

white elephant A white elephant is a possession that its owner cannot dispose of without extreme difficulty, and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness. In modern usage, it is a metaphor used to describe an object, ...

. The project is led by public company

Snowy Hydro Snowy Hydro Limited is an electricity generation and retailing company in Australia that owns, manages, and maintains the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme that consists of nine hydro-electric power stations and sixteen large dams connected ...

Limited. Snowy 2.0 will last for at least 100 years. When complete, it is expected to have a large impact on the price and reliability of electric power.

History

Initial plans for a power station at the location were discussed in 1966. Further studies were undertaken in 1980 and 1990. The current project originated as the centrepiece of

Malcolm Turnbull Malcolm Bligh Turnbull (born 24 October 1954) is an Australian former politician and businessman who served as the 29th prime minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018. He held office as Liberal Party of Australia, leader of the Liberal Party an ...

's climate change policy in 2017. The original cost of the project was around $2 billion. A

feasibility study A feasibility study is an assessment of the practicality of a project or system. A feasibility study aims to objectively and rationally uncover the strengths and weaknesses of an existing business or proposed venture, opportunities and threats pr ...

carried out in 2017 finding the project was both technically and financially feasible. The study was released on 21 December 2017 and found the project cost would be between $3.8 and 4.5 billion. The first tunnel, completed by October 2022, was a 2.85-kilometre section that provided main access at Lobs Hole. It was 10 metres in diameter and provides pedestrian and vehicle access into the power station. By May 2023 the emergency, cable and ventilation tunnel was excavated. It is 2.93 kilometres long, 10 metres in diameter, and will be used for power station ventilation and high-voltage cables. Excavation of the transformer and machines halls began in June 2023. By February 2024, half of the construction required was complete. It was originally expected to be completed by 2024. Snowy Hydro 2.0 has been beset by delays and cost blowouts. Delays have been caused by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, global

supply chain A supply chain is a complex logistics system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end consumers or end customers, while supply chain management deals with the flow of goods in distri ...

disruptions, complex design elements and variable site and geological conditions. The delays have raised concerns that Snowy Hydro will not be ready in time for new solar and wind projects coming online as five coal-fired power stations close.

AEMO The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) performs an array of gas and electricity market, operational, development and planning functions. It manages the National Electricity Market (NEM), the Wholesale Electricity Market (WA) (WEM) and the ...

warns that supply gaps will emerge from 2025. The project is currently expected to be generating power as early as late 2027 and to be fully operational by the end of 2028. The project is using three

tunnel boring machine A tunnel boring machine (TBM), also known as a "mole" or a "worm", is a machine used to excavate tunnels. TBMs are an alternative to drilling and blasting methods and "hand mining", allowing more rapid excavation through hard rock, wet or dry so ...

s to dig tunnels. One of the machines, called Florence, was stuck for 19 months after encountering soft rock near Tantangara. Florence is excavating the 16-kilometre headrace tunnel, which will connect the underground power station to the upper Tantangara reservoir. Florence launched in March 2022 and was named in honour of Australia's first female electrical engineer, Florence Violet McKenzie. Eight weeks later the machine was bogged in wet, soft ground. The machine is capable of digging 30 to 50 metres a day. In December 2022, a

sinkhole A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are also known as shakeholes, and to openings where surface water ...

opened up above the tunnel. Florence was moving at a pace of six metres a day by early December 2023. In May 2024, the tunnel boring machine was stuck in hard rock. A complex fault zone caused the delay. By 11 July Florence was clear of the hard rock after using ultra-high-pressure water jetting. A fourth boring machine was required due to the delays caused by Florence.

Drilling and blasting Drilling and blasting is the controlled use of explosives and other methods, such as gas pressure blasting pyrotechnics, to break rock for excavation. It is practiced most often in mining, quarrying and civil engineering such as dam, tunnel ...

was used to dig caverns. The company managing underground blasting operations was

Orica Orica Limited () is an Australian-based multinational corporation that is one of the world's largest providers of commercial explosives and blasting systems to the mining, quarrying, oil and gas, and construction markets, a supplier of sodium c ...

Rock bolt A rock bolt is a long anchor bolt, for stabilizing rock excavations, which may be used in tunnels or rock cuts. It transfers load from the unstable exterior to the confined (and much stronger) interior of the rock mass. Rock bolts were first u ...

s and

shotcrete Shotcrete, gunite (), or sprayed concrete is concrete or mortar conveyed through a hose and pneumatically projected at high velocity onto a surface. This construction technique was invented by Carl Akeley and first used in 1907. The concr ...

support the exposed solid rock face. The main cavern was excavated between June 2023 and January 2024. In early 2025, tunnelling work was halted due to safety concerns.

Design and location

It is located remotely within the

Kosciuszko National Park The Kosciuszko National Park ( ) is a national park and contains mainland Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, for which it is named, and Cabramurra, New South Wales, Cabramurra, the highest town in Australia. Its borders contain a mix o ...

in the

Snowy Mountains The Snowy Mountains, known informally as "The Snowies", is an IBRA subregion in southern New South Wales, Australia, and is the tallest mountain range in mainland Australia, being part of the continent's Great Dividing Range, a cordillera syste ...

. Snowy Hydro 2.0 will use water from the Talbingo Reservoir (bottom storage) and Tantangara Reservoir (top storage). The dams have a height differential of 700 metres. The new power station is being built by the Italian firm

Webuild Webuild S.p.A. (previously Salini Impregilo S.p.A.; ) is an Italian industrial group specialising in construction and civil engineering. The company was formally founded in 2014 as the result of the merger by incorporation of Salini into Impregi ...

. It will be located in a cavern 800 metres underground. The underground location allows for reduced environmental impacts within the national park. The operational footprint of the facility is less than 0.01% of the total size of the park. The Inclined Pressure Shaft (IPS) through which the water will pass is the largest of its kind in the world and facilitates the water's return to the upper reservoir when the pump-turbines operate in reverse. The IPS is 10 metres in diameter, 1.6 kilometres long, and at a 25-degree incline. Pre-cast

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

segments for the shaft are produced at a factory in the town of

Cooma Cooma is a town in the south of New South Wales, Australia. It is located south of the national capital, Canberra, via the Monaro Highway. It is also on the Snowy Mountains Highway, connecting Bega, New South Wales, Bega with the Riverina. ...

Fatigue Fatigue is a state of tiredness (which is not sleepiness), exhaustion or loss of energy. It is a signs and symptoms, symptom of any of various diseases; it is not a disease in itself. Fatigue (in the medical sense) is sometimes associated wit ...

resistance is a key design element in the IPS. The power station will measure 22 metres wide, 50 m high, and 250 m long. The station will house six reversible Francis pump-turbine and motor-generator units. Three units will be of variable speed with the remaining of synchronous speed. Each turbine will have a rated output of 333 megawatts. Power generating equipment is being supplied by

Voith The Voith Group is a global technology company. With its broad portfolio of systems, products, services and digital applications, Voith trades in the markets of energy, paper, raw materials and transport. Founded in 1867, Voith today has aroun ...

. It will be connected to the grid via the HumeLink transmission line. Construction costs for the project total $4.8 billion. The construction of overhead power lines by

TransGrid Transgrid is the manager and operator of the high voltage electricity transmission network in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, Australia, and is part of the National Electricity Market (NEM). The company's offices are locate ...

has been opposed by community advocacy groups. Landholders' desires to see the transmission line built underground have been opposed due to prohibitive costs.

References

External links

*https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/ {{Energy in Australia Snowy Mountains Scheme Economic history of New South Wales Engineering projects Hydroelectric power stations in New South Wales Murray River River regulation in Australia Snowy Mountains Underground power stations

History

Design and location

See also

References

External links