Big Government is the ultimate racket. The costs have been hidden, the FOIs denied, the Unions are raking in the cash, and a foreign corporation is soaking in easy money. And in the end, the stored power is likely to be a horrible $200/kWh, making it 6 times the price of brown coal plant power.

Malcolm Turnbull promised us it would cost $2b and take four years, and here we are, nine years later, with just $40 billion and three more years to go….

There is something in this project for every grifter. The incompetent management delays have added $8b in interest during construction. That will keep the Bankers happy. There are 3,000 extra workers nobody thought we'd need and they earn $250,000 each on average. And there is now $12 billion in interconnector high-voltage line costs. Like all "renewable" projects, the fuel is free but the cost to collect and distribute it burns like a magnesium flare.

Snowy Hydro 2.0 cost spirals to $42bn sparking calls for Royal Commission
By Tansy Harcourt, The Australian

The true cost of Snowy Hydro 2.0 has spiralled to $42bn and should be the subject of a Royal Commission into "one of the biggest disasters" in Australian infrastructure, economist Bruce Mountain and energy executive Ted Woodley said.

Major contractors on Australia's flagship renewable energy project are simultaneously reaping profits at taxpayers' expense under arrangements that guarantee payment irrespective of performance, while a series of prime ministers have maintained a wall of secrecy around the project.

The cost is now $1,500 per man, woman and child in the country. It's like the government demanded every family of four pay $6,000 for something that doesn't generate electricity, it just stores what wind and solar power make at the wrong time, so we can convert a useless product into something less useless.

This is pure subsidy money to wind and solar power. Each renewable project should be charged the fees to cover this, then see what the hourly charge for unreliable power really is.

Who is making money from Snowy?

Italian construction giant Webuild is in charge of the project and booked €4bn of revenue from Australia last year alone (a figure that included other projects). Australia is now a close-second in terms of revenue for Webuild behind Italy, and is its biggest pipeline going forward.

Webuild operates under a controversial cost-plus margin contract. Based on industry standards, that probably means it gets $1.20 for every $1 it spends, creating a perverse incentive to go big.

"That's a wonderful business to have, isn't it?" said a former insider.

One of Webuild's delays was so that they could get worker accommodation built in Italy and sent to Australia. Because the Australian economy is not built around remote mining camps, right?

From the Herald Sun — Bruce Mountain is renewable fan, and even he hates it:

Snowy 'Too Big to Fail'
Dr Mountain argued the project represents a fundamental policy failure that successive governments refuse to acknowledge. "Snowy 2.0 is, and always was, a dreadful idea," he said, citing its price, environmental damage and a storage system that cannot be quickly recharged like batteries.
It takes months to pump water through a cascade system before the upper reservoir can be refilled, making it unsuitable for the flexible backup role it was designed to fill.
When finished, Snowy Hydro should provide 350GWh of long-duration energy storage, impressive enough to power 3 million homes for a week. Whether it is worth $42bn is another thing entirely.