Snowy Hydro 2.0 chief Dennis Barnes says total delay won’t be known until early 2024
New chief executive Dennis Barnes has conceded progress on a key tunnel at the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project has been minimal since November.
New chief executive Dennis Barnes has conceded progress on a key tunnel at the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project has been minimal since November, saying it was not yet clear when a tunnel machine would return to operations.
Answering questions at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, Mr Barnes confirmed 12-month delays in the completion of the company’s $5.9bn Snowy Hydro 2.0 project, as well as its Kurri Kurri power plant in the Hunter Valley, and did not rule out further delays.
One of three tunnel machines at the project, Florence, hit difficult ground in November, with Mr Barnes conceding that, while it had operated since then, it had not moved a “great deal of distance”.
And chief operating officer Roger Whitby confirmed a ground subsidence existed above the machine’s tunnel, which sits 50m-70m below ground, suggesting a portion of the tunnel has collapsed.
Mr Barnes said Snowy’s contractors were still progressing other parts of the project while they worked out a way to stabilise the ground surrounding the tunnelling machine, but said it was not yet possible to determine whether the tunnelling problems would cause further delays.
Snowy Hydro is now forecasting that its pumped hydro expansion will be completed by the end of 2027, while the 750-megawatt Kurri Kurri plant is now expected to be fully commissioned by December next year, although initial power production could come as early as May 2024.
Mr Barnes said it would not be possible to tell whether Snowy 2.0 faced additional delays until the first quarter of 2024, when the first third of a major underground cavern is excavated, despite problems experience by Florence.
“We have completed 6km of tunnels and the surge shafts are going well and there’s five major work fronts,” he said. “So the critical path will move around as the project progresses. But until we get the machine ready for unpausing, then we wouldn’t say that it would delay the whole project,” he said. “Until we get into the excavation of the cavern, about a third of the way through the excavation, it would be premature to be definitive and we expect to be at that point in the first quarter of 2024.”
More Coverage
