Lombardi facilitates creation of giant eco battery

Lombardi AG has been contracted to plan and build a pumped storage power plant for wind and solar power. Located in the Snowy Mountains in Australia, the plant will have a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, which roughly equates to the output of two nuclear power stations with a medium capacity. It will lead to the creation of the biggest ecological battery in the world.

It was to guarantee energy provision in all eventualities that the Australian state opted to build the biggest pumped storage plant in the world for solar and wind power. The Ticino newspaper “laRegione” published a statement from Lombardi AG that confirmed the news. The power plant will store excess energy from the network by pumping water into a large lake, and as need arises, turbines will release the power. The planning and construction of the plant known as Snowy 2.0 was awarded to the Milan-based consortium Salini-Impreglio, which in turn contracted Lombardi AG with the project planning. 

Construction is expected to take eight years, with costs totaling around three billion euros. The planning costs alone amount to some 72 million euros. “With this contract, Lombardi AG demonstrates that it is one of few companies in the world with the skills to build such a big a pumped storage plant,” writes the company in the statement. Smaller plants have been built in Switzerland over the last decade. The SBB power storage plant Ritom in Ticino uses a water drop height of 850 metres between lake and powerhouse to generate a total output of 44 megawatts. Lombardi AG was also involved in the planning of this project.