In marking its 70 per cent completion milestone for Snowy 2.0, Snowy Hydro has detailed the immensity of the project.
More than 733,000m3 of underground excavation – equivalent to 293 Olympic-sized swimming pools of material – has been completed, with subterranean caverns carved out by drill-and-blast methods.
Underground efforts are supporting a fitout for an underground power plant the size of the Sydney Opera House, with tunnel boring technology playing an increasingly important role.
Snowy Hydro has commissioned its fourth tunnel boring machine (TBM) to support Snowy 2.0, naming it after Monica Brimmer, the winner of a First Nations art and storytelling competition.
With a 12m cutterhead, TBM Monica has been purpose-built to navigate the highly variable geological conditions of the Snowy Mountains. Once it has commenced operations in the coming weeks, the TBM will tasked with excavating the section of a 17km tunnel that passes through the geologically challenging Long Plain Fault Zone.
“Like the original Snowy Scheme, Snowy 2.0’s delivery is one of the most complex feats of engineering currently underway in the world,” Snowy Hydro chief executive Dennis Barnes said.
“Snowy 2.0 is the lynchpin of our energy transition, storing enough renewable energy to power three million homes for a week.
“More than half of the energy storage Australia needs by 2050 will come from Snowy 2.0 alone.”
Snowy Hydro has achieved an additional three per cent of completion since October, when the company said it had completed 67 per cent of Snowy 2.0, with more than 5200 workers working across four project workstreams.
The pumped hydro expansion of the Snowy Scheme, Snowy 2.0 has a design life of 150 years.
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