Snowy Hydro, the Australian government-owned company behind the country's largest pumped hydro project, has deferred the facility's opening to December 2028.
The Snowy 2.0 pumped storage hydro project in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales is expected to generate 2GW of renewable energy, and provide about 350,000MWh of large-scale storage to the national electricity market to help back up a system increasingly dominated by solar and wind energy.
The finished project would pump water to the highest reservoir in a linked system during periods of cheap electricity and release it when required.
Talbingo dam /Snowy Hydro
Image credit: Snowy Hydro
The project is expected to cost A$5bn (£2.6bn), although the company has warned there are likely to be cost overruns...