- Australia’s flagship renewables project flagged another increase in costs to A$22.2 billion ($16 billion) — more than 11 times the estimate when it was announced less than a decade ago.
- The final pricetag for the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro plant may be as much as A$25 billion, and expectations for full commissioning have been pushed back to late 2029, state-owned developer Snowy Hydro Ltd. said in a statement. The revisions were driven by pressures in the construction sector and significant geological challenges, the government said in a separate statement on Friday.
- Snowy 2.0 will have capacity of 2,200 megawatts and be able to store 350 gigawatt-hours, enough to power 3 million homes for a week. The project, which was commissioned in 2017, has faced setbacks linked to its location in the remote Snowy Mountains, including a drilling tunnel collapsing.
It's bad luck when one of the main tools to do the job runs into issues, or conditions struck are much different to what was expected.
However I have my suspicions [1] that there's plenty of people who've either opted to milk as much as they can get from the project or padded bills for reimbursement as the taxman is paying ... or they're quietly in league with the crowd who are very much against renewable power.
The blow out in costs is being used presently by some of the more influential cats to try and talk up why government should not involve itself in critical infrastructure ... after all it's better when private interests do these things ... pinky swear they'll never sell at prices that squeeze the public for every little bit they can get ...
As much as it is, it's going to cost less than having to decommission a single nuclear power plant.
[1] From what slowly occurred for the years after covid on federal and state funded road upgrades in my neck of the woods, moved from high percentage of actual workers with a few safety folks ... until it reached silly proportions of non workers standing around the road works and weeks passed on with little occurring ... steaming when at one quarter mile section there was 14 or 16 safety personnel while two blokes with spades were busy. Later I'd chat to one of the guys who worked there and he spelt out that the contractors were getting every ounce out of it as they could ... the stinger being there's sections not even 5 years after completion that with all traffic travelling on one side for too long, it's failed and now it's not just the sides of the roads that have to be redone but the entire road.
I think the costs are worth eating for this long duration storage versus cancelling the project, but batteries are so cheap now another hydro storage facility will never be built again.
> Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand)
> Results:
Last week: 100% RE
Last 269 weeks: 98.5% RE (1/5)
To be clear yes even for that price, it's bang for buck so as long as the project completes and works as expected and not severely limited due to some other unforeseen problem.
There was a more expensive pumped hydro projects planned but ultimately the proposed Aud 62 billion development was shelved. [1] I note there's now a near Aud 3 billion dollar pumped hydro project with a storage capacity of 12 GWh proposed west of Eungella, Qld [2] [3] about 20 to 30 miles to the west (further inland) from where the large Pioneer - Burdekin project was to be built. This time around there seems to be a lot more details included, like power infrastructure etc - unlike the Pioneer Burdekin project where community interaction was farcical - no one with authority could publish a map or communicate just where the wall of the lower dam was going or how high, where the power lines were going or any thoughts for HVDC transmission for robustness out to the industry that ultimately would seek out an all year round stable power supply, and absolutely no assurances that those who had livelihoods in an already well developed agricultural area below the lower dam wall out to the coast would not be slowly displaced by industries that would move into the area as part of construction, and then subsequent industrial / technological developments.
I feel like a lot of product that are development, gain acceptance, uniformly embraced and ... finally becoming a necessity, high capacity battery prices will slowly increase higher than inflation in a couple of decades onwards.
https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/news/snowy-2-0-cost-reassessme...
- Australia’s flagship renewables project flagged another increase in costs to A$22.2 billion ($16 billion) — more than 11 times the estimate when it was announced less than a decade ago.
- The final pricetag for the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro plant may be as much as A$25 billion, and expectations for full commissioning have been pushed back to late 2029, state-owned developer Snowy Hydro Ltd. said in a statement. The revisions were driven by pressures in the construction sector and significant geological challenges, the government said in a separate statement on Friday.
- Snowy 2.0 will have capacity of 2,200 megawatts and be able to store 350 gigawatt-hours, enough to power 3 million homes for a week. The project, which was commissioned in 2017, has faced setbacks linked to its location in the remote Snowy Mountains, including a drilling tunnel collapsing.
It's bad luck when one of the main tools to do the job runs into issues, or conditions struck are much different to what was expected.
However I have my suspicions [1] that there's plenty of people who've either opted to milk as much as they can get from the project or padded bills for reimbursement as the taxman is paying ... or they're quietly in league with the crowd who are very much against renewable power.
The blow out in costs is being used presently by some of the more influential cats to try and talk up why government should not involve itself in critical infrastructure ... after all it's better when private interests do these things ... pinky swear they'll never sell at prices that squeeze the public for every little bit they can get ...
As much as it is, it's going to cost less than having to decommission a single nuclear power plant.
[1] From what slowly occurred for the years after covid on federal and state funded road upgrades in my neck of the woods, moved from high percentage of actual workers with a few safety folks ... until it reached silly proportions of non workers standing around the road works and weeks passed on with little occurring ... steaming when at one quarter mile section there was 14 or 16 safety personnel while two blokes with spades were busy. Later I'd chat to one of the guys who worked there and he spelt out that the contractors were getting every ounce out of it as they could ... the stinger being there's sections not even 5 years after completion that with all traffic travelling on one side for too long, it's failed and now it's not just the sides of the roads that have to be redone but the entire road.
I think the costs are worth eating for this long duration storage versus cancelling the project, but batteries are so cheap now another hydro storage facility will never be built again.
https://bsky.app/profile/davidosmond.bsky.social/post/3myehs...
> Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand)
> Results: Last week: 100% RE Last 269 weeks: 98.5% RE (1/5)
https://reneweconomy.com.au/near-100-pct-renewable-electrici...
https://www.pv-tech.org/solar-and-battery-storage-push-austr...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/22/solar-an...
To be clear yes even for that price, it's bang for buck so as long as the project completes and works as expected and not severely limited due to some other unforeseen problem.
There was a more expensive pumped hydro projects planned but ultimately the proposed Aud 62 billion development was shelved. [1] I note there's now a near Aud 3 billion dollar pumped hydro project with a storage capacity of 12 GWh proposed west of Eungella, Qld [2] [3] about 20 to 30 miles to the west (further inland) from where the large Pioneer - Burdekin project was to be built. This time around there seems to be a lot more details included, like power infrastructure etc - unlike the Pioneer Burdekin project where community interaction was farcical - no one with authority could publish a map or communicate just where the wall of the lower dam was going or how high, where the power lines were going or any thoughts for HVDC transmission for robustness out to the industry that ultimately would seek out an all year round stable power supply, and absolutely no assurances that those who had livelihoods in an already well developed agricultural area below the lower dam wall out to the coast would not be slowly displaced by industries that would move into the area as part of construction, and then subsequent industrial / technological developments.
I feel like a lot of product that are development, gain acceptance, uniformly embraced and ... finally becoming a necessity, high capacity battery prices will slowly increase higher than inflation in a couple of decades onwards.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-02/lnp-scraps-pioneer-bu...
[2] https://www.capricorniapumpedhydro.com.au/project
[3] https://epbcpublicportal.environment.gov.au/all-referrals/pr...
Edit: missing word would -> would not ... brain to hand issue when words are skipped I guess.