Pub View: Snowy Hydro
By Allan Richardson
So Snowy 2.0 is going to be over budget? That puts it in the classification of ‘Project’. It’s time to put everything in perspective.
When drilling, or attempting to drill 27 kilometres of tunnels, it should come as no surprise that the geology is not necessarily homogenous (homogeneous if you talk proper) for the entire length of the tunnels. Although I imagine that the engineers were hoping for something more ground-breaking (sorry) than 150 metres of progress before Hades intervened with a sharp intake of sink hole. Can’t help bad analysis.
The laughable misrepresentation of the initial cost of the project of two billion Aussie dollars was never taken seriously by anyone, (including its proponents) when it was first announced, so there’s no point clutching your pearls after the event and crying foul.
If Snowy 2.0 approximates its anticipated cost of 12 billion dollars, it doesn’t even come close to the overrun of the initial budget of the construction for the Sydney Opera House, which recently celebrated its Golden Wedding. Congratulations! It delivered a bottom-line underestimation of just over 1,400%. So if Snowy Hydro 2.0 completes construction below, say, ’30 large’, it will be enthusiastically promoted by all those involved, the ringmaster of the media circus being the PM du jour, doggedly accompanied by the nodding NSW state leader of the same party. Despite the fact that (with luck) these leaders may not yet have even finished school at the time of writing, it will be lauded as a massive, well executed savings windfall.
I’d like to thank everyone involved, especially yada, yada, yada …
Remember that NSW disregarded the complex mathematical conundrum of ‘width of imported railway rolling stock’ relative to ‘tunnel width’, including allowances for ̶y̶o̶b̶b̶o̶s̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶u̶r̶t̶h̶e̶s̶t̶ sway. I personally know several thousand people who could manage such calculations, but clearly the laws of probability prevented anyone with such skills from participating in the decision-making process.
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Let’s not think for one minute that NSW is inexperienced in creating and bloviating on its many tunnelling clusterfucks. Credit where it’s due! Of course, Chris Minns is now totally responsible, since Morrison is unable to plead due to mental incapacity, and someone has to carry the can (of worms).
AUD 12,000,000,000 (only USD 7.67B) is a power of money. Despite SM 2.0 setbacks, including some unrealistically optimistic guesswork by professionals, the estimators were no doubt less concerned than usual about budgeting ‘inaccuracies’, with a Prosperity Gospelidiot PM egging them on at the time in support of future Photo-Ops.
The idea behind SH 2.0 is sound enough for the jottings on the back of a beer coaster one evening. We need to find everything we can to replace fossil fuel. Who knows; maybe thermodynamics may reappear as a useful contributor to the renewable energy market after Rewiring Australia hook’s ’em up, and my four handfuls of shares in ‘hot rocks’ may reach three figures! (in integers of cents).
We are setting aside 150 billion in tax cuts from people earning over 180k, an amount coincidentally including the base salary of even the most junior politicians. (Speaking of whom, where is Wyatt Roy nowadays?).
We’re also committing enough to the USMIC Virtual Nuclear Submarine Illusion (VNSI), or ‘allusion’ according to some wag, to more than supplement our gratuitous tax relieving, vote winning expenses to well over half a trillion bucks. You could get a few Snowys for that.
It’s time for a proportionate response to nature’s existential threats to civilisation, not to pacify shirt-fronting attempt by some jumped up warlord. Not to put too fine a point on it.
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15 comments
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Mick Perger
Return to home pageQuite simply tactic, using hydro to delay transition away from fossil fuels and related future income streams, ditto those mooting nuclear; but the logic falls flat when the costs far outweigh the supposed benefits, but same budget funds cannot be used for green or renewable sources?
What else would you expect from the LNP, who have dibs on themselves as being great financial managers – good at sports rorts but clueless when it comes to major projects. Surely we have had sufficient tunnels dug in Australia to have a rough idea of the upper and lower bounds of per km cost, with factors such as diameter, length, geology, spoil disposal, etc. taken into account. From what I’ve seen, $600M to over $1B per km is somewhere near the ball park, with 27km of tunnels needed for SH2.0 it was never going to get done for $2B.
Corporate anuses have been aware for all time that generating money, much of which they can corner personally, most of the time, is enough to be someone, get up the date of everyone opposed, earn, scrape, gouge, hoard and acquire.., so the world can get stuffed,as such types know they’ll be gone before the dooming, the betraying, the openly revealed stupidity and greed.
Perhaps we can start by getting people to refer to it as Snowy two-point-zero, rather than Snowy two-point-oh. It is interesting how an Opposition can be hugely concerned by a Government’s over-spending then suddenly look the other way with a rise to power. Elected representatives, frugal to a fault in Opposition suddenly become incredibly profligate —- to the benefit of certain selected beneficiaries- once in power. The tax cuts for the wealthy, the submarines are a couple of good examples but there are the secret (commercial in confidence) billions that go to consultants or others without the mugs knowing and in the meantime, said mugs see wages going backwards, rents rising in an uncontrolled way, fuel prices going through the roof, and the cost of household and other insurance increasing by far more than the Cost of Living or the CPI that ignores some of the more volatile aspects of the costs of living. The Treasurer regrets he can’t improve things for the ordinary Joe or Josephine, while pocketing the $22bn windfall first surplus in 15 years. But that’s ok, just keep paying your completely unavoidable PAYG taxes , if you have a job, and suck up the fact you are homeless or living in a tent or caravan while all the newly minted millionaires and billionaires stash their riches in the Caymans or Delaware thus depriving their country, and us mugs, the legitimate taxes. Did I hear someone say negative gearing, or Capital Gains Tax or Franked Crediits? No, thought not.
What an absolute Joke (sick),
I’ve got the fornesic time/cost/engineering/strategic runs on the board for major industrial / infrastructure projects over 30+ years.
The day the LNP head clown Turnbull made his very first (thought bubble) announcement, my reaction “That’d be right you screaming bimbo idiot – another LNP bluesky trough plot. Just like yer NBN stuff-up no fucking idea – a tech nightmare, impractical, and an HSE/time/cost time-bomb.”
Issues:
– Ultra-complex geology
– SMEC a bunch of incompetent engineering cowboys
– in legal hot water internationally
– Proper eng/geotech research and feasibility / CPM assessment / capex would take 5-6 years
– LNP owned, sitting on old Snowy Scheme not making a buck – answer, build a trough
– Huge issues tech and time/cost integrating into majorly beefed up elec distrib infrastructure
– Best guess sitting in front of telly, $10-12billion over 10-12 years – if yer lucky
Every single issue has come to reality.
Yet, no matter, every narcissist must have their day, LNP new clown, Morrison, brought it to law.
Issues compounding:
– Head contract let to Selini a very shady Italian concern (consortium now known as Webuild)
– lacking hard nosed engineering discipline – big on political arm-bending
– Risk profiles being over-ridden or ignored (SMEC & Selini)
– Major contractor ‘partners’ falling like flies
– Significant OHSE issues not being managed – major illegality
– Unions on the case and demanding compliance
– Florence a drop in the bucket – but used as convenient public cover
– SMEC in chaos – way out of their league
– Chaos delays & disruptions will continue to compound (probably more disasters afoot)
– Suffering sick project syndrome – no-one proud & hardworking – more like ducking & weaving
All big knobs still lying.
All considered, wouldn’t be surprised by time commissioned – in-use, $15-18bn by year 2035+
Yep, 4 Corners ripped the wing off it.
The contractors.
But who researched and investigated them and where was oversight after the project commenced. I find myself blaming incompetence in the public services again, no response when virtual criminality introduced its.face.. penny-wise/ pound foolish.
CW: Yes, it is a case of incompetence, however through decades of careful management, with focus on “small government”, the LNP have managed to downsize the public service to the point where it doesn’t have innate “large engineering project” management skills. This is a perfect example of what happens when projects without proper oversight are left to the contractors.
More corruption and incompetence from previous LNP misgovernments? Well, butter me on both sides and colour me stonkered. Who woooda thunk it?
Meanwhile the only winners in this debacle are the foreign owned multinational corporations providing services to the project. Obviously, the pre-drilling assessment was inadequate, so why cannot the Australian government hold that corporation to account for the cost overrun?
NEC,
Ha haaar! Good question!
Have you read the SMEC contract (cast by the LNP in govt)?
Have you read the Selini (consortium) contract (cast by the LNP in govt)?
A reminder of my observations:
SMEC a bunch of incompetent engineering cowboys – in legal hot water internationally
Selini a very shady Italian concern (consortium now known as Webuild)
– lacking hard nosed engineering discipline – big on political arm-bending
Even if the job gets finished by, say, 2035, the lawsuits may go on for another 10-15 years.
Oh for the taxpayers, because of porkbarrel idiot narcissists like Turnbull & Moriscum.
Snowy 2 was a Turnbull rush job in response to SA Tesla mega battery proving NOT to be the dud that the LNP had predicted and garnering positive reviews.They had to do something quick to avert attention. I wrote about his flawed description of stored hydro costing at the time. (Back to the Drawing Board Malcolm AIMN). I’m not saying stored hydro doesn’t have a place in the future renewable energy system or that lithium ion is a viable mass storage medium, but all have a place and need to be planned and costed properly.
Confessedly nitpicking, but the first half of the last sentence is back to front; it should read ‘It’s time for a proportionate response to civilisation’s existential threats to nature’ instead of the author’s version. Having just returned from a 6,000km road trip to the north & back, most of it away from the coast and well inland, I can say with some confidence that this country is rapidly going to hell in a handbasket, per the environmental destruction wreaked in less than a quarter of a millennium. First the axes and woodsmen, then the bulldozers & chains, after that the farming & grazing; countless millions of tress lost, ecosystems destroyed, mycelial networks critical for systems health gone; billions of creatures from macro to micro also gone, all in the cause of enriching a microcosm of entitled landholders whose ancestors likely shot & killed the indigenous people on whose land they squatted, and sent that produce through to the cities where city folk ignorant of the actions of people more than fifty to a hundred kilometres inland consumed in ignorance whilst the continent continues to be gutted and ravaged by ignorant practices up to and including this very day. Poor fellow my country, indeed.
And as for efficiencies in infrastructural projects, I might add that after relocating to Sydney 43 years ago I hitched up & back to Brisbane along the Pacific Highway, still a two-laner for most of its length, and it was that year, 1980, that the NSW government committed to upgrading to a four-lane divided motorway for its entire length.
That project was only recently finished a couple of years ago. Forty years to build a road! We don’t do urgent very well in this country. The Chinese would have done it in three.
Canguro, on my phone the first paragraph of your response is overwritten and illegible, but the bit that I can read is the teaser, the author should reverse the first half of the last paragraph. So … ‘a proportionate response to nature’s existential threats to civilisation’ doesn’t meet with your approval?
To be a ‘proportionate response’ to the existential threat of climate change is to go at it hammer and tongs. There’s no second chance. People should not confuse ‘proportionate’ with moderate or cautious. Cheers 🙂
Al, it’s somewhat of a semantic paradox; of course humanity is now faced with an existential threat given the hammering that the planet’s ecosystems have been subjected to and the now increasingly evident outcomes vis-a-vis fires, floods, droughts, resource depletion, species extinctions and so on, but equally and just as significantly, the ecosystems are in the dire thrall that they are as a function of humankind’s indifferent use of natural resources. You make a good point and I don’t for a moment disagree with your observations.
And yes, it’s up to us, the so-called wise ape – hah! – to fix this mess that we’ve created, or else, suffer the consequences.
One gets the impression that the scale of the task ahead is so overwhelming that it’s perhaps unlikely there’s a solution to the problem. Many of the committed scientific community whose daily bread is to pay attention to these issues seem to think that we’ve reached a stage where tipping points may coalesce and create a rolling scenario of ever-burgeoning disasters; melting ice-caps, oceanic rises in water levels imperilling millions upon millions of humans in low-lying regions, salinised delta food bowls, not to overlook the critical role of insects in global crop pollination and the observed insectageddons with species losses running into the high 80-90% in many cases, rivers drying & dying, permafrost melts in far-eastern Siberia and other places, glacier shrinkages, the rising threat of the ESAS (East Siberian Arctic Shelf) – the shallowest part of the planet’s continental shelf and a massive storage point of methane hydrates which if released through sea floor thawing will put our CO2 emissions into the pale and precipitate massive global warming. Daunting stuff indeed.
Thanks for commenting.
What a ludicrous waste of taxpayers funds. This could have been solved years ago with, a few million, of battery storage. Even when it’s finished, if ever, the price of electricity generated will be off the chart.