Essay by Eric Worrall
A billion here, a billion there, soon you’re talking about real money.
Snowy Hydro 2.0 flags another cost blowout with $12bn price tag now considered unachievable
Pumped hydro project in Kosciuszko national park is 67% complete, but supply chain cost increases and issues with a borer have caused cost overrun
Tom McIlroy Political editorFri 3 Oct 2025 12.24 AEST
Snowy Hydro is preparing for another significant cost overrun on the massive Snowy 2.0 project in the Kosciuszko national park, with a line-by-line reassessment ordered from contractors on Friday.
The giant pumped hydro project, first touted by the Turnbull government in 2017 as costing $2bn, was later revised to a cost of $5.9bn. Escalating to almost $13bn in 2023, construction is due to be completed by the end of 2028.
The Snowy Hydro chief executive, Dennis Barnes, said the latest cost assessment was deemed necessary due to significant supply chain price increases, including related to an underground power station, as well as delays from stoppages in 2024 with a major tunnel boring machine. He said the cost of adding a fourth boring machine could not be covered within the most recent project price tag.
…
“We have gradually come to the realisation, and then quickly come to the realisation that we’re not going to achieve the schedule at target cost of $12bn,” Barnes said.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/03/snowy-hydro-20-flags-another-cost-blowout-with-12bn-price-tag-now-considered-unachievable
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Even if the project is completed, it will not help make green energy economical.
The snowy 2 project will be a disappointment, even if the project is completed and works as expected. The original 2017 feasibility study estimated round trip electricity losses are at least 33%, even without transmission losses, which adds 1 / 0.67 = 49% to the cost of already expensive renewable energy. Since the intended purpose of Snowy 2, amongst other things, is to time shift solar energy output, this 49% more expensive renewable energy will be loaded onto the peak demand bills of ordinary households.
And let’s not forget, that feasibility study also gave us a cost estimate of $3.8 – $4.5 billion. If the 2017 energy efficiency estimates are as shaky as the 2017 cost estimates, the 49% increase in the cost of renewable energy pumped through the hydro scheme could be an underestimate.
And looming over all this is the $12 billion + capital cost and maintenance cost of the project, which will be paid for by taxpayers one way or another – either hidden in tax receipts, or piled onto energy bills.
Snowy 2 is the fever dream of people desperate to make their unaffordable Net Zero dreams succeed, but in practice is turning out to be as useless as every other attempt to make renewable energy work.
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The Snowy 2 project produces no energy. It is an energy consumer, with a round-trip loss of 33%, according to its prospectus. The high round trip loss is likely due to the use of bi-directional turbines which are less efficient than uni-directional turbines. If the prospectus is to be believed, Snowy 2 has ten times the capacity of the Bath County pumped hydro. The Bath County project would have cost 4.7$ Billion USA in 2024, so the cost does not seem disproportionate – if Snowy 2 delivers on its promises. There is some fairy dust in the prospectus, as to be expected. Used wisely, Snowy 2 as a load-follower and grid balancer has value. Its spinning mass shojuld helps ride-though from intermittent wind and solar fluctuations. Overall, it is superior in capability, in principle, to the backup batteries on which Australia has spent lavishly previously. Now, the project needs completion and demonstration.We shall see.
Even if it works, I don’t think the Aussie economy could handle a 50% increase in energy costs over what renewables already cost, no matter what accounting sorcery the government tries to pull. That 50% number is based on their own feasibility study.
Not using curtailed renewable energy (and paying the operators not to generate) will cost more than storing it despite the inefficiencies.
Even on the best days for wind and solar, NSW still uses 30% COAL. !
There is no extra wind and solar.. so all that will happen is that Snowy 2 will allow the Coal fired power stations to make a bit more electricity during the middle of the day.
Snowy 2 will work by buying coal fired electricity during the day when it is cheap, and selling it at peak times when electricity is expensive.
Did you do a calculation? Over what period did you amortise the capital and interest cost?
Australian renewables are estimated to cost Australians between A$500bn to A1.7tr. Since Oz has 11 million households, that works out to A$45,000 to A$150,000 per household, to be repeated every 15-20 years. Clearly Australia cannot afford those costs.
Surely it’s worth any price to save the planet and reach Utopia! (/sarc)
LOL 🙂
It is supposed to have a 2GW output into a grid that averages 25GW, peaking to 60GW. But other folks have indicated that its output will be lucky to reach 1.5GW, mainly because the lower dam can only hold two thirds of the top dam’s output, so 33% of the water will be lost in each cycle. And very little way to replenish the top dam’s output save the occasional rainfall. And since there are no transmission lines nearby, a new expensive one has to be pushed through the mountains, desecrating the landscape. It’s a very expensive useless system and won’t really backup much of one of Australia’s grid.
“Snowy 2 has ten times the capacity of the Bath County pumped hydro.”
Afraid not. Bath County has about 3.0 GW of capacity vs. the 2.2 GW capacity of Snowy 2.2.
And “bi-directional” turbines are needed unless one installs separate pumps and uni-directional turbines with greatly increased capital and O&M costs.
‘
Also, “it is superior in capability, in principle, to the backup batteries.” Amen to that.
FWIW, Pumped storage probably can be cost effective. For example New York City uses two pumped storage facilities — one near the falls and one near Albany — to buffer power from Niagara Falls and help meet late day peak power demands. I assume it works for them as they spent a fair amount of money a few decades ago to upgrade the Gilboa-Blenheim facility Southwest of Albany.
Whether the Snowy Mountains project makes economic sense is way beyond my pay grade. Seems a bit pricey
But compared with a battery even $20B for its nominal 350 GWh of capacity is pretty cheap. Liddell BESS cost $0.75B for just 1 GWh of capacity. So yes it is a rubbish project badly managed, but it will make some sort of sense, eventually. I doubt the round trip efficiencies are that much higher for batteries to be honest, but that doesn’t really matter at a system level if the energy used to charge them was going to be curtailed anyway. A very useful paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592625001134) that got a bit of a bagging here estimated we had a one in 10 year chance of a 30% energy shortfall for 10 days, so we need 3 days of storage, which comes in at 2000 GWh. 2000 Liddells, or 1 Liddell for every 15000 people. I think we should site them in the Green and Teal suburbs. That’s almost a year of GDP. and after 15 years you get to replace all the batteries (and if you think the current low price will continue I’ve got a bridge to sell you), or more likely rebuild each facility completely around whatever new tech has come up.
Would be FAR, FAR better and cheaper to build a couple of new modern COAL FIRED power stations. !
“Snowy 2 is the fever dream of people desperate to make their unaffordable Net Zero dreams succeed, but in practice is turning out to be as useless as every other attempt to make renewable energy work” says it all.
Well in the real world we’ve got $30B (?) of
renewableunreliable energy hardware installed that can either be used to generate electricity, or else will just crumble. My bet is it will be used, and the best thing to do with renewables energy when you can’t use it directly is to store it. As I’ve shown using current tech Snowy 2 is much cheaper than batteries, and much more feasible than stored hydrogen.Snowy 2 doesn’t achieve very much as a backup, and for its eventual cost, Australia could have built at least one, if not more, nuclear power stations that would have delivered reliable power 24/7 for a very long time.
Agree entirely. But the clowns are in charge and we need to make the best of a very bad job. Stopping a project that is politically acceptable and less ruinously expensive than batteries is better than not building it and not building big reactors (which is what we need, not SMRs) either, would make a bad situation worse.
Because you still haven’t caught on.
Snowy 2 WILL NOT produce any electricity. All it will do is allow the coal fired power stations to run more efficiently during the middle of the day.
Snowy 2 is of zero benefit to wind and solar.
I repeat.. even on the best days for wind and solar in NSW, coal still produces about 30% of the electricity.
So what will be being stored is cheap coal, to be sold off at at a large profit peak periods when wind and solar are non-functional.
Renewables will not be doing the pumping, just some extra output from the coal fired power stations.
ie.. Its a scam !!
Economists refer to this as the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
It’s gonna just crumble anyways, regardless of “best” intentions or somebody’s wet dream.
I think net zero “success ” is secondary to skimming as much taxpayer funding and irrational private investment cash as possible before it is terminated.
Born and raised in Illinois, I remember the late Senator Everett M. Dirksen quipping: “A billion here. A billion there. It all ads up!” Another quip by the Senator was: “That is just so much hog wash!”
He never said: “…soon you are taking about real money.”
I’m sure Senator Dirksen wouldn’t mind my homage 🙂
There is a file on the senator at wikiquote.org, where it mentions that after some research it was concluded, he never said:
…”soon we are talking about real money”. The is a long list of his quotes at this site.
I’m from that late great state also, and while indeed he never said that exactly, it entered the lexicon that way, and that’s how we remember it. He was a tough old bird and a great Senator.
Wow . . . “round trip electricity losses are at least 33%.”
Methinks that puts pumped hydro on par with—perhaps even worse than—large scale battery storage as a means of wasting energy before it can be sent to the grid.
Again, if that energy was to be curtailed anyway (ie wind turbines told not to export power etc) then the efficiency is small beer in a systems engineering sense.
If you don’t build the wind turbines and solar panels in the first place, then there’s no need to curtail or store the energy.
The argument that 33% is small beers in an engineering sense is nonsense because engineers tasked with building a power grid would look at the extra cost of the storage system plus the extra costs of the windmills and solar panels as all one system and realize it made no sense at all.
Yep
Sorry the turbines and panels already exist. So the choice is switching them off when there is too much wind and sun, or storing the excess, however inefficiently.
The energy is worthless when it costs more to store than to throw the energy away and use a fossil fuel plant when more energy is needed.
Tell them that over-supply won’t be paid for. ie, they can switch off during over-supply without compensation (like any other company with unwanted product) or they can finance their own backup : battery, hydro, or whatever. They and all other generators get a fair system, and consumers get the cheapest most reliable electricity. It is so simple that the politicians will refuse to understand it.
Try to comprehend….. They do NOT get switched off in NSW
To pump water for Snowy 2 they will be just run the coal fired power stations a bit higher during the day.
You totally miss the fact that the pumped hydro storage system (Snowy 2.0) was not pre-existing and an enormous amount of money has been spent already to put it in place.
Not only that, but there are future costs associated with keeping that system operational once it goes online, such as maintenance, repairs, insurance, and—wait for it!—a standing labor force unless the whole system is totally automated and highly reliable . . . odds of that? These are all above-and-beyond the imputed cost due to the system’s round trip inefficiency.
IMHO, it is likely that all these factor will combine to yield a “zero sum game”; that is, that there will be no net cost savings after, say, 50 years of operation compared to just having built a natural-gas fueled CCGT power station to provide the same on-demand backup power capability.
In a kakistocracy nothing is reliable nor efficient.
Yeah but for how long. In twenty years they will need to be replaced. What then? A perpetual cycle of madness!
Depends on whether the incomes of those engineers depends on them not making that consideration. 🤔
“wind turbines told not to export power “
Doesn’t happen in NSW where Snowy 2 will get its electricity from.
Only place wind turbines are told to “curtail” in Australia is in SA, when there is too much roof-top solar.
Interconnectors exist.
How many coal, gas or nuclear plants could you build with 12 billion dollars? You know the power generators that actually work.
You can actually built the amazing number of 1 average nuclear plants for this money 🙂
But that’s not the problem.
The thing is that you don’t need to lie to people that it’ll cost just 2 billion(because otherwise it would have been impossible to start the project for a dozen reasons) and then the price will
never get that much out of control – you may add 30-50% to the initial costs ; and that’s about it.
And you will get for many decades cheap and reliable energy.
But with renewables you will eventually pay 7 -10* more when all is said and done,
and it will ALWAYS end up to be less efficient than promised.
The only reason renewable electricity has not reached yet the 700% + price increase by now is traditional energy.
As long as renewables are the smaller part of the market they can parasitize off of fossil fuel energy – combined with subsidies etc. they will look somehow competitive,
but once the real energy is gone there will be a real runaway effect .
Prices will become real and rise.
Then those energy prices will reach the solar panels and windmills.
They will become way more expensive and therefore energy will become way more expensive.
A vicious cycle – and in the end we will realize that all renewable energy is needed to maintain and replace those millions of solar panels that exist.
The only reason we can get the current renewables for “cheap” (besides subsidies)
are the thousands of new coal power plants in china and fossil fuels that makes mining possible and viable and solar panels cheap.
(and mark my words : there is no mining without fossil fuels if you don’t want mining Congo style – and even those rely heavily on fossil fuels.
And without mining no economy,no civilization)
The article “How Much Does It Cost to Build a Gas Power Plant “, published July 2024 by Gas Turbine World (see https://gasturbineworld.com/capital-costs ), gives these capital costs and separate operating & maintenance costs for large-scale natural gas fueled power plants:
“H-Class 430 MW Single-Shaft Combined Cycle
Single-shaft configuration rated 418 MW and 58.9% efficiency, $453.2 million total (1,084 $/kW installed) and 13.10 $/kW fixed O&M cost
“H-Class 1100 MW Multi-Shaft Combined Cycle
Multi-shaft configuration rated 1,083MW and 59.4% efficiency, $958 million total (950 $/kW installed) and 12.20 $/kW fixed O&M cost.
So, yeah, $12 billion Australian dollars = $7.9 billion USD would cover the purchase of at least five (5) 1,083MW power plants with money left over to operate them for some 20+ years (excluding any revenue income, but not accounting for inflation impacts on O&M).
Bob: “How many coal, gas or nuclear plants could you build with 12 billion dollars? You know the power generators that actually work.”
In a two part comment below, I look at nuclear and assume that the Ozonians buy two 1100 MW Chinese-built Hualong One nuclear reactors for about the same finalized capital cost as Snowy 2.
The cost of the two Chinese reactors assumes that the Ozonians are willing to use Chinese labor crews to perform some large portion of the onsite construction and systems installation tasks, and assumes that the two reactor vessels and all the reactor support systems are manufactured in China.
The first part of my comment is here, and the second part is here.
The bottom line of my extended comment is that for about the same upfront capital cost, two 1100 MW Chinese-built nuclear reactors would deliver more than three times as much electricity to the Australian power grid as will Snowy 2.
We’d have no choice but to use Chinese skilled labour because our PhD barristas are insufficient in numbers and skill.
Snowy 2 is built in an area which does suffer drought. It is also one of the places that Tim Flannery reckoned had dams that would never fill again. Thankfully he was wrong (what a surprise!) and there is a fair bit of water around at the moment. But these dams also contribute to our irrigation water which grows a very unimportant thing called food.
I really wish there was a way we poor benighted taxpayers could make Malcolm Turnbull pay out all his fortune to the scheme before we had to pay a cent. He locked this stupid idea in during his reign as Prime Minister. And I use “reign” specifically as he was arrogant enough to think he was the king with a divine right to take other people’s money and throw it against a wall, or in this case, a tunnel.
He had a plan to diverted “other people’s money ” to his mates and WEF paymasters. In that respect, his corrupt project is a great success.
Trying to make Ruinables less ruinable is a fools’ errand. Here’s an idea: stop building them in the first place.
I asked Copilot AI about, “Sunk Cost” and it decided to use this project as an example.
“Real-World Example: Snowy 2.0 Hydro ProjectAustralia’s Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme is a textbook case. Initially estimated at $2 billion, it’s ballooned to over $13 billion with only ~67% completion. Despite sunk costs, decision-makers must now weigh:
Some argue continuing is justified to avoid wasting the infrastructure already built, while others see it as a classic sunk cost trap.”
I think that “Political Optics” will be the chosen decider. No mention jail for the original decision makers.
AI volunteered some, “Better Framing for Strategic Decisions.” They include, “Reassess viability, Optimize future value. Mitigate long-term risk. Pivot to alternatives.” No mention of putting the crooks in jail.
Foreign dark money in Australian energy policy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpbQj4QHw2U
Wikipedia states that Snowy 2’s nameplate capacity is 2200 megawatts and will deliver 350,000 megawatt-hours of stored energy.
Suppose the final capital cost for Snowy 2 at completion eventually reaches 16 billion AUD when all the bills are finally paid.
For that same money, Australia could buy two 1100 MW Chinese Hualong One nuclear reactors, assuming the Ozonians were willing to use Chinese labor crews to perform some large portion of the onsite construction and systems installation tasks, and assuming the two reactor vessels and all the reactor support systems are manufactured in China.
Wikipedia says: “The Australian grid will need about 660 GWh of storage by 2050.[12] 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).[13]”
Assuming a 90% annual capacity factor, those two Hualong One 1100 MW nuclear reactors could deliver 17,400,000 megawatt-hours annually to Australia’s power grid.
CONTINUING MY ORIGINAL COMMENT …..
In the comment above, I calculate the annual output of two Hualong One nuclear reactors at 17,400,000 megawatt-hours using a 90% capacity factor.
These two reactors could probably be purchased and installed for the same finalized capital cost as Snowy 2 if the reactor systems are manufactured in China and if imported Chinese skilled labor performs the necessary site construction and systems installation work.
What will be Snowy 2’s annual output of stored energy? I asked ChatGPT for an analysis of what would be Snowy 2’s annual output, on average, and this is the response:
—————–
ChatGPT’s Short answer:
Snowy 2.0’s own updated business case forecasts ~5.3 TWh (5,300 GWh) of net generation per year (on average). (Snowy Hydro)
Why that number — and what it means:
Snowy Hydro’s Updated Business Case (May 2024) models the project increasing Snowy’s average annual generation from about 3.5 TWh → 5.3 TWh, and states the plant will provide 2,200 MW capacity and 350,000 MWh (350 GWh) of storage.
That 5.3 TWh is the company’s modeled average annual generation. (Snowy Hydro +1)
To put it in simple terms: 5,300 GWh/year = running the 2.2 GW plant for about 6.6 hours every day on average (5,300 / (2.2×365) = 6.6). That matches external commentary pointing out Snowy’s business case implies several hours of dispatch per day on average. (Renew Economy +1)
Key assumptions & uncertainties (why you’ll see other numbers):
The quoted business-case figure already reflects the project’s market modelling (price-driven pumping/generation, assumed cycle counts, losses, seasonal patterns). (Snowy Hydro)
Round-trip efficiency (RTE) matters for how much energy must be pumped to support that generation — pumped hydro typically has RTE = 70–80% (some Snowy modelling assumes lower efficiency at high outputs), so actual pumping energy required and the number of cycles/year depend on the RTE used. (ATB+1)
Independent analysts have called the 5.3 TWh projection optimistic because it requires frequent cycling (~15 full 350 GWh discharges per year) and favourable market conditions.
Alternative, more conservative estimates are lower; critics point to operational limits and real-world dispatch patterns. (National Parks Association of NSW +1)
Quick sensitivity view (intuition):
If Snowy actually discharges its full 350 GWh storage ~15 times/year, that gives ~5,250 GWh (=5.25 TWh) — i.e. the business case number.
If it cycles less often (e.g. 8–10 full cycles/year) you’d see ~2.8–3.5 TWh/year. If operational losses or constrained operation reduce usable storage, annual generation falls further.
Bottom line:
Use ~5.3 TWh/year (5,300 GWh/year) if you want Snowy Hydro’s modeled/official average.
If you prefer a cautious estimate, many analysts treat that number as optimistic and expect materially lower annual generation unless market and operational conditions match the business-case assumptions. (Snowy Hydro +2)
—————-
OK ….. If the final capital cost of Snowy 2 ends up being ~16 billion AUD when all the bills are finally paid, and if the capital cost of two Chinese Hualong One reactors is also ~16 billion AUD assuming Chinese manufacture and imported Chinese labor, then we get (17,400,000 MWh / 5,300,000 MWh) = 3.3 times as much electricity for about the same upfront capital cost.
Three fundamental questions:
1) Can Snowy 2.0 pump water back into the higher elevation reservoir at at least half the rate that it withdraws water? . . . I am looking at the calculation that says it will use 6.6 hours every day to produce power, so can it refill its reservoir at its maximum pumping rate in the remaining 17.4 hours of the day?
2) Does Snowy 2.0 have a downstream reservoir sufficient to contain (with margin) the amount of water it uses daily and thus needs to pump back to the higher elevation to replenish that reservoir?
3) When Snowy 2.0 is pumping water back into the higher elevation reservoir, where does it get the approximate 17 GWh of electricity it needs every day to run the pumps?
TYS: Three fundamental questions:
The ChapGPT response asked if I wanted to see references to the detailed modeling done to support the claims made by Snowy Hydro about the performance of Snowy 2.
We should believe that modeling of Snowy 2’s performance is a very complex endeavor with some number of uncertainties which interact in a variety of ways.
I declined to get a more detailed response concerning the Snowy 2 operational models because for my purposes, I was interested in the total estimated annual energy delivery figure, plus a short description of any uncertainties which might be associated with that modeled annual figure.
TYS: 1) Can Snowy 2.0 pump water back into the higher elevation reservoir at at least half the rate that it withdraws water? . . . I am looking at the calculation that says it will use 6.6 hours every day to produce power, so can it refill its reservoir at its maximum pumping rate in the remaining 17.4 hours of the day?
I have to presume that within the timeframe of a single day, the facility can refill the higher reservoir — with enough volume of water for another full day of generation under average conditions — assuming that enough power is available from the grid to support that level of pumping activity, and that enough volume of water is available in the lower reservoir. If on some days where those two assumptions don’t hold, then it can’t.
TYS:2) Does Snowy 2.0 have a downstream reservoir sufficient to contain (with margin) the amount of water it uses daily and thus needs to pump back to the higher elevation to replenish that reservoir?
I have to presume that it does, subject to the condition that enough volume of water is actually available in that lower reservoir on any particular day.
On the other hand, if the pumped storage facility has been delivering a full 2200 MW for a continuous 160 hours, then the lower reservoir will be filled to its maximum usable capacity — while the upper reservoir will have been drained of its maximum usable water volume.
TYS: 3) When Snowy 2.0 is pumping water back into the higher elevation reservoir, where does it get the approximate 17 GWh of electricity it needs every day to run the pumps?
I would presume that all the energy it stores comes off the grid, not from a direct feed from some number of directly-connected wind and solar farms.
If the facility is in refill mode, and if wind and solar farms aren’t supplying enough electricity at any given instant in time as the refill schedule calls for, then the electricity has to come from coal-fired and gas-fired power plants — wherever those are.
Here is another question: Can Snowy 2 both pump and generate at the same time; for example, if grid stabilization services are needed in real time at any point within a 24-hour period? I would presume it has to do both at the same time.
Thanks for this excellent and prompt response, and I fully respect that some assumptions have to be made due to the current immature design/construction status of Snowy 2.0.
As for your added question: the very first post under this article, by whsmith@wustl.edu, states the Snowy 2.0 uses bi-directional turbines to both produce energy when draining water and in consuming energy when pumping water back into the higher elevation reservoir. This is given as (part of) the reason for the low round-trip efficiency of the overall system cycle, only 67% efficient.
Here is what Wikipedia states (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_2.0_Pumped_Storage_Power_Station ), which confirms the post of whsmith@wustl.edu:
“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 station will house six reversible Francis pump-turbine and motor-generator units.”
So, I guess depending on net output power the facility needs to provide at any time it could operate, say 2–4 of the Francis reversible unit is “pumping” mode while at the same time operating 4-2, respectively, of the six Francis reversible pumps in power generation mode, meanwhile wasting 33% of the energy required for such “round trip” operation.
Seems crazy to me, but then what do I know?
Can someone confirm that coal derived energy will be needed to keep the upper dam topped up? Will this represent additional coal power generation over and above current levels? If so, it seems like a step backwards in efforts to reduce CO2 to “safe” levels.
Surely no fossil fuels are being used in the construction and material supply for this project, right?
This is what happens when you allow progressives with a liberal arts background to design your power systems.
Outta be a law forbidding liberal arts types from designing any tech stuff, much less a power system.
Wouldn’t even trust them with an espresso machine.
Former PM Turnbull needs to be hauled up in front of a royal commission and made to explain his irrational plan and then have his wealth confiscated and used to pay down this debt. Sa.efor his green lieutenant, Matt Kean, who now heads up the “Climate Commission “.
They are nothing less than criminals.
Yet, they steadfastly maintain their opposition to the only viable renewable power source, Nuclear.
Wouldn’t it have been simpler and a more efficient use of taxpayer money to build a couple of nuclear generators? I know these are hated by the so-called environmentalists because it is a technology fix, but they work (ask Ontarians and the French) so why do governments futz with these other dead end technologies? Do they just keep people employed, or is it part of some form of denial? Pumped storage has never worked well or been cost effective, even in systems where power is expensive, so why pursue a solution that is so expensive?
The $2 Billion AUD was before the full feasibility study & not inclusive of all work required. It didn’t include the required grid upgrades (different owner, different budget), interest costs, future inflation. The real budget was after the first feasibility study & tenders.
The current high estimates include the grid upgrades which should be kept separate since any source of additional generation may need it & it’s someone elses budget.
The company chosen to do the boring was obviously wrong. They were warned about the ground needing mitigations but tried to avoid the extra costs of the extras to the boring machine/process. Then the worst prediction happened & forced the pause of progress.