Snowy Hydro 2.0 power station creates thousands of new jobs across NSW

EXCLUSIVE: THE PM’s “game-changing” Snowy Hydro 2.0 power station will create 5000 new jobs across NSW when construction starts next year.

Water released from the Snowy Hydro dam at Lake Jindabyne plunges into the river at a rate of 12,000 Olympic swimming pools a day.

• TURNBULL’S $2 BILLION PLAN FOR HYDRO EXPANSION

THE Prime Minister’s “game-changing” Snowy Hydro 2.0 power station will create 5000 new jobs across NSW when construction starts next year.

Malcolm Turnbull will this week ramp up measures to lower household power bills by hauling energy bosses to their second meeting in a month and fast-tracking $8 million to start building Snowy Hydro 2.0, where drilling and analysis is already underway.

In a bid to shift focus away from the citizenship crisis, he will target rising electricity prices that are crippling families.

Mr Turnbull, who will visit the Snowy Hydro power station in Cooma this morning, told The Daily Telegraph 5000 new jobs would be created in Cooma, Tumut and Sydney in a “jobs bonanza” when construction begins.

Mr Turnbull will this morning fly to Cooma before catching a helicopter to a Snowy Hydro site. Picture Kym Smith

“Snowy Hydro 2.0 will help safeguard the energy security of the eastern seaboard, particularly on hot summer days and cold winter nights, while providing a jobs bonanza during the construction phase,” he said. “The game-changing project will have enough capacity to provide 350,000MW/h of power for a week, enough to meet peak demand continuously for 500,000 homes.”

Mr Turnbull will this morning fly to Cooma before catching a helicopter to a Snowy Hydro site, where he will go underground and look at some of the tunnels.

Already, 350 people have been employed in the construction of Snowy Hydro 2.0, with extensive drilling, soil-testing and analysis work being done on the western side of the Tumut mountains.

The numbers behind the Snowy Hydro scheme.

“The Australian government’s support for pumped hydro is part of our commitment to ensure reliability and affordability in the energy system and to build an energy network we can rely upon while reducing emissions,” Mr Turnbull said.

He said the $8 million accelerated agreement between the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and Snowy Hydro had been reached to push ahead with planning for the construction of the project.