19 May 2021

Snowy Hydro Managing Director and CEO Paul Broad and Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor MP announce the Hunter Power Project on site at Kurri Kurri.

17 October 2021

The Hunter Power Project is based on a strong business case and will have a double-digit internal rate of return in the order 12.3%. It will build on Snowy’s record of sound and strategic investments. 

November 2022

Almost 200 20-metre deep continuous flight auger piles that will hold the foundations for the turbines and infrastructure are installed at site.

February 2022

Earthworks for the gas-fired power station are well underway. Approximately 125,000 cubic metres of dirt and aggregates were moved on site to help build the construction pad. Approximately 6,750 cubic metres of dirt were excavated for the foundations for the gas turbine and generator.

February 2023

The Hunter Power Project completed the first concrete pour that will form the foundation of the first Gas Turbine, known as GT1.

March 2023

The concrete pour for the foundation of GT2 was completed over an 18 hour period.

June 2023

Two generator stators arrived on site at Kurri Kurri after their journey from the Port of Newcastle.

The 150-metre-long convoy containing the 314-tonne generator stator left the Port of Newcastle at 9pm on a Saturday evening and arrived at the Kurri Kurri site at 2am on the Sunday, where it was unloaded and positioned for installation.

The convoy included six prime movers, four police escort vehicles and four pilot vehicles.

27 September 2021

Following a competitive procurement process and global search, a contract was signed with Mitsubishi Power to deliver two 330MW world-leading and hydrogen-ready F-Class open cycle gas turbines (OCGT). The Hunter Power Project will underpin greater investment in renewables, firming up an estimated 1.5 to 2GW of renewables from within Snowy’s portfolio. That’s equivalent to 160,000 household solar installations.

Our first tunnel boring machine, the Lady Eileen Hudson, is on the move. Named after an important Snowy Scheme ambassador and the wife of inaugural Scheme Commissioner Sir William Hudson, the Lady Eileen Hudson TBM is excavating the 2.6km main access tunnel down to the underground power station cavern. The TBM is 137 metres long and has an 11m diameter – as high as a three-storey building.

We are excited to announce the winning names for our final two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) – Kirsten and Florence.

Students in the Snowy Mountains nominated groundbreaking Australian women in science, technology engineering and maths (STEM) for the Snowy 2.0 TBM Naming Competition. 

Almost 3,000 people voted on a shortlist of six influential women, with astrophysicist Kirsten Banks and Australia’s first electrical engineer Florence Violet McKenzie receiving majority votes.

At the Polo Flat segment factory – which will produce more than 130,000 seven-tonne concrete segments to line the Snowy 2.0 tunnels – the construction of two automatic carousels is close to completion and there’s about 100 people working onsite.

On 3 December 2021, we commissioned our second tunnel boring machine (TBM), Kirsten. It was an exciting moment for TBM namesake, Australian astrophysicist and Wiradjuri woman Kirsten Banks, and 10-year-old Brungle student Kobe Burnes, who nominated Kirsten as part of the Snowy 2.0 TBM Naming Competition.