Major cost blowouts continue for Snowy Hydro 2.0. 

When Snowy Hydro 2.0 was announced in 2017 by then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the estimated cost was just $2b.

That’s a figure widely viewed at the time to be significantly undercooked.

Now, the official budget has jumped by $800m to $5.9b, as a series of cost variation claims have been lodged with Snowy Hydro by Future Generation – a joint venture of Italy’s Webuild, Australian-based Clough and US-based Lane Construction.

The engineering, procurement and construction teams have attributed these major cost blowouts to COVID-19 and inflation.

Apparently the $5.9b cost estimate does not include the cost of necessary transmission network upgrades, which will also run into the billions of dollars.
No surprise if the cost blowout exceeds $10b.

Snowy Hydro 2.0 involves the construction of a new pumped hydro energy storage facility , through the digging of 27km of new underground tunnels that will be used to transfer water between the Tantangara and Talbingo dams.

A new 2000MW power station will also be built between the two dams to provide up to 350,000 megawatt-hours of pumped hydro energy storage capacity.