When Snowy 2.0 is in the news, it's usually about money. The cost of the huge project has gone well beyond the initial A$6 billion estimate and will now cost more than $12 billion.

But cost overruns don't affect the real value of this pumped hydro project. When it comes online - likely in 2028 - Snowy 2.0 will bring something fundamentally new to the Australian electricity system: energy storage at a scale far beyond anything else.

It will have five times more storage than all of Australia's other pumped hydro and grid batteries combined, its capital cost is five times lower than batteries per unit of energy storage, and its lifetime is ten times longer than batteries. Our calculations show Snowy 2.0 will cost about one cent per day per Australian over its 150-year lifetime, assuming the

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