Kidston Pumped Storage Risk Review

Description

The Kidston Pumped Hydro Project is the flagship project of the Kidston Clean Energy Hub, located in Far-North Queensland. It is a world first project whereby an abandoned gold mine will be utilised to generate up to 250MW storage.

The Kidston Pumped Storage Hydro Project utilised two abandoned mining pits as the upper (Wises Pit) and lower reservoirs (Eldridge Pit). The project required the construction of an underground power station cavern, access declines, pressure shaft, and tailrace tunnels to complete the join between two reservoirs.
During peak power demand, water is released from the upper to the lower reservoir, passing through reversible pump/generators acting in generation mode.

Approach

SYSTRA Bamser assisted a large Australian contractor and provided specialist due diligence advice for the potential Early Contractor Involvement in the project.

Specifically, SYSTRA Bamser provided support in the following areas:

• Review of the feasibility study construction program for the tunnel, underground cavern, and structures portions of the project;
• Participated in the underground construction workshop;
• Generated geotechnical information overview including gap analysis;
• Developed a risk review report to inform ECI senior management go/no go decision; and
• Identifed opportunities to be further developed in the ECI project phase.