Snowy Hydro 2.0: Technology, safety measures part of new scheme
State of the art technology, more women and stricter safety measures make the Snowy Hydro 2.0 version very different to the first scheme.
NSW
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The starkest contrast between the building of the original Snowy Hydro scheme and the 2.0 version is death.
From 1949 to its completion in 1974, 121 people died in the original construction of the massive electricity generating scheme in NSW’s Snowy Mountains.
In the 50s and 60s excavation through mountains for the series of tunnels funnelling water to create power was done by blasting the rock with dynamite.
The drill and blast technique required workers to collect the loose rock and jam it back into the ceiling of the tunnels for stability.
Rockfall, accidental detonations and the danger of heavy rolling stock in a confined space were ever-present threats. Workers also faced demands to finish the vast project as soon as possible.
And this was despite the original scheme being a leader in some areas of worker safety.
“At the time Snowy was the leader in safety by insisting we had seatbelts in the cars,” Snowy Hydro 2.0, CEO Paul Broad said.
Technology will be at the forefront of Version 2.0 – a pumped-hydro expansion of the existing Snowy Scheme which is designed to significantly add to our existing energy generation and large-scale energy storage capabilities.
Almost all of the tunnelling will be done by two massive tunnel boring machines.
They will need only 25 people, where there used to be 50,000 workers tunnelling.
“The techniques have changed dramatically. While there will still be some drill and blast, it’ll be far safer,” Mr Broad said.
The use of virtual reality also makes Version 2.0’s construction safer, he said.
Digital plans of the tunnels and machinery are created to allow engineers to walk through their plans and potentially spot challenges and mistakes before any work is done on the ground.
“You can take a virtual 3D walk through the work we are doing, the operators can walk through and instantly digitally change how the layout occurs for this massive machinery,” Mr Broad said.
“You are making the mistakes when doing it virtually so you can change it and get it right.”
Social and economic change join technology as the big differences between the two schemes.
More than 60,000 immigrants from more than 30 countries were recruited to NSW to work on the original scheme, beside a team of Australian surveyors, engineers and labourers made scarce by the toll of World War II.
More than 100,000 people in total worked on Snowy Hydro from 1949 and 1974, while only 4000 workers are needed for 2.0.
Women were there for the first scheme, but they were the spouses of the workers.
With construction under way and tunnelling to start in the coming days, Mr Broad said the focus was local jobs and at some sites there were more women than men.
“On the job right this moment is about 1100 people working, of that would be only be 150 international and all the rest would be locally from either in the bush, in the mountains or from around Australia,” he said.
”Certainly at Snowy Hydro we’re getting more and more females tapped into the sciences, into the engineering then in previous years.
“The biggest risk in the project is the different rock types, and the first thing that struck me was more than half the people on site were female, it was so great to see.”
Work on Snowy Hydro 2.0 started three years ago and is expected to be completed by 2025 with 28km of new tunnels up to 10m tall linking the Tantangara and Talbingo reservoirs with the underground power station set into a 250m long, 50m high and 30m wide cavern.
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