Voith has been awarded a contract to equip the Australian pumped storage power station Snowy 2.0, one of the largest pumped storage basins worldwide, with electrical and mechanical power plant components.

The Future Generation Joint Venture (a Joint Venture between Salini Impregilo, Clough and Lane) and the Heidenheim-based technology group signed the contract at beginning of April. Operator of the plant is Snowy Hydro Ltd. The order includes the supply of six reversible pump turbines, each with a rated output of 333 megawatts, three of which are variable-speed. In addition, the order includes six motor generators, the auxiliary systems and the complete power plant automation. With the six units, Snowy 2.0 will achieve a total output of 2,000 megawatts and provide the national electricity market with 175 hours of continuous large-scale storage. In the almost two-year tendering process, Voith Hydro successfully prevailed thanks to its know-how in pumped storage technology. At the heart of the innovative pumped storage technology is a special asynchronous motor-generator, the doubly fed induction machine. Compared to a conventional synchronous machine, it decouples the mechanical speed from the constant frequency and can vary. The project can thus make a significant contribution, both to grid stabilization and to the further expansion of power generation from renewable energy.