The 2000-megawatt pumped hydro storage project in New South Wales is a key pillar of Australia’s plan to wean its $2 trillion economy off fossil fuels.
The 2000-megawatt pumped hydro storage project in NSW is a key pillar of Australia’s plan to wean its $2 trillion economy off fossil fuels, but it has been beset by delays and cost blowouts.
In an announcement that stirs hope that it may meet its most recent schedule, Snowy Hydro chief executive Dennis Barnes said the developer had completed about 6km of tunnels after completing work on a second 2.93km emergency, cable and ventilation tunnel.
He said progress was “solid”
“We are extremely pleased the ECVT excavation has been completed and the whole project team is excited to be moving into the next critical phase of construction,” Mr Barnes said.
“Our huge power station cavern will be about 800m underground and will be one of the largest and deepest in the world.”
The ECVT will be used permanently for ventilation and high voltage cables, and intermittently for general access and maintenance.
The complexity of the project, however, looms large and many executives in Australia’s energy sector expect further delays.
In March, the developer said the project would not be fully online until the end of 2029 and it can no longer provide a cost estimate. Snowy Hydro 2.0 was previously expected to cost $5.9bn.
Snowy Hydro chief executive Dennis Barnes.
To illustrate the difficulty, Snowy Hydro said it was modifying one of its tunnelling machines to excavate an inclined pressure shaft and line it with specially-designed concrete segments.
“The shaft is 1.45km long and excavating a segment lined tunnel of this length at a very steep 47 per cent incline using an 11-metre diameter tunnel boring machine named Kirsten is without precedent internationally,” Mr Barnes said.
Snowy Hydro is also battling difficult geological conditions, which have complicated the development.
This year, another large tunnel boring machine, known as Florence became bogged in soft ground that forced work to stop.
The nation’s power grid can ill-afford further delays.
Coal is still Australia’s dominant source of electricity generation, but the fossil fuel is under intense social and economic pressure that has accelerated the closures of major generators such as Origin Energy’s Eraring power station in NSW.
Australia has earmarked major renewable energy projects such as Snowy Hydro 2.0 to compensate, but the head of Australia’s green bank last week warned the country was well behind if it was to meet its ambitious energy transition target.
Ian Learmonth, head of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, said Australia was not on course to meet its goal of having zero-emission energy sources account for 80 per cent of generation by 2030.
The challenge is made more difficult by the slow progress in building new transmission lines.
The federal government has allocated billions of dollars to build infrastructure to connect renewable energy developments such as Snowy Hydro.
However, the process of delivering major transmission projects through rural areas and amid landowner issues is widely expected to take longer than official schedules, constraining the volumes of clean energy that may be delivered to users.
Officials say five major projects covering 10,000km to connect new renewable supplies need to be built “as urgently as possible” as fears grow that big storage schemes such as Snowy 2.0 may lead to new supply being stranded if new transmission developments are not delivered on time.
About 150 gigawatts of energy supplies, nearly triple the current Australian generation and storage capacity, has been proposed by companies and investors by 2032, with large-scale solar and wind backed up by battery storage accounting for 88 per cent of the project pipeline.