Construction has been completed on the transition tunnel crown at the Tantangara intake for Australia’s Snowy 2.0 pumped storage project, marking a key milestone for the scheme’s upstream infrastructure, Future Generation Joint Venture (FGJV) has announced.
The structure forms the entry point where water from Tantangara Reservoir will enter the Snowy 2.0 system before being conveyed through underground tunnels to the project’s power stations, located nearly 1 km beneath the Snowy Mountains.
The newly completed crown incorporates approximately 450 cubic metres of concrete, 160 square metres of formwork, and 80 tonnes of steel reinforcement. The structure is 3.7 metres thick and has been designed to withstand the high hydraulic pressures associated with large-scale pumped storage operations.
Most of the intake structure will be submerged once the reservoir is operational, making the completion of above-water construction a critical phase of the project schedule.
Snowy 2.0 is expected to provide around 350,000 megawatt-hours of energy storage capacity to Australia’s National Electricity Market. According to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), this represents approximately half of the large-scale storage capacity required by 2050 to support the country’s transition to renewable energy.
FGJV is delivering the project as principal contractor for Snowy Hydro. Snowy 2.0 is a major expansion of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme and is intended to strengthen grid reliability and increase renewable energy integration across the national electricity network.
