Hydro Tasmania CEO Evangelista Albertini quits after one year in job
The boss of state-owned Hydro Tasmania has quit after just one year in the top job.
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Hydro Tasmania’s chief executive has quit after just a year in the role, with his exit following one month after the managing director of its retail electricity business Momentum also resigned.
Evangelista Albertini stepped down from the Tasmanian government-owned hydro operator on Monday, citing personal reasons.
Mr Albertini had spent several decades in a variety of roles at the company and has been replaced on an interim basis by finance and strategy boss Ian Brooksbank.
Amy Childs, the head of Hydro Tasmania’s retail business Momentum Energy, resigned a month ago amid uncertainty over the unit’s future.
Hydro Tasmania put Momentum up for sale in March, a day after announcing 50 jobs cuts as part of a restructure.
Two weeks later Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein reversed the decision and said Momentum would never be sold under any circumstances by his Liberal government, which was re-elected in May.
Hydro Tasmania said on Monday it had recently undergone a transformation to ensure the business “is positioned strongly to succeed in a rapidly changing National Electricity Market.”
The company employs 1300 people and generates 2600 megawatts of electricity across 30 power stations and more than 50 dams.
A raft of CEOs have quit the industry in the last few months, including AusGrid head Richard Gross, TransGrid boss Paul Italiano, AGL Energy’s Brett Redman, and EnergyAustralia’s Cath Tanna, while the head of Queensland’s largest power company, Stanwell’s Richard Van Breda, stepped down after a coal row.
Tasmania is working on a second Bass Strait electricity cable worth $3.5bn connecting to mainland Australia which owner TasNetworks expects will deliver substantial benefits to customers in NSW and help ease strains on the grid.
About half the 1500 megawatt capacity of the proposed Marinus Link project could be operating by 2028 with the full load online between 2030 and 2032 depending on a set of investment scenarios.
While the interconnector will flow to Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, the benefits of renewable energy developments, including new wind farms and pumped hydro energy storage would also flow through further north to NSW.
The debate over who should pay for Marinus Link has been rekindled recently after Premier Gutwein said mainland taxpayers should be willing to help pay given it will provide access to Tasmania’s dispatchable green energy.
Funding from other states and federal taxpayers would be justified, given the benefit of more fully accessing Tasmania’s “Battery of the Nation”: renewable, dispatchable hydro power.
This would act as a “firming” power source, supporting other states when the wind was not blowing nor the sun shining sufficiently to support their non-baseload renewables.
Plans to make Tasmania the “battery of the nation” received a boost in December after the creation of a “special purpose corporate vehicle” — 62.5 per cent commonwealth-owned and 37.5 per cent Tasmanian government-owned — to progress the Marinus Link transmission through to a final investment decision expected in late 2023.
A second cable would allow Tasmania, already self-sufficient with 100 per cent renewable energy, to pursue a 200 per cent target via wind farms, green hydrogen and pumped hydro, with the surplus exported to the mainland.
Originally published as Hydro Tasmania CEO Evangelista Albertini quits after one year in job
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