Snowy Hydro signs wind deal with CWP

Electricity generation and retail company Snowy Hydro has today announced it will purchase 200 MW of output from CWP Renewables’ future Uungula Wind Farm for a 15 year period.

The deal, Snowy’s second with CWP, expands the company’s renewable energy access but comes just weeks after it was revealed the company’s flagship project, the multibillion dollar Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project, may be delayed. 

Snowy 2.0 was supposed to come online by 2026, but that date may be pushed back to 2028.

Back to its deal with CWP, the contract will see Snowy purchase both power and renewables certificates from the 414 MW Uungula Wind Farm being built near Dubbo in central New South Wales.

The wind farm, CWP’s biggest to date, has received development approval and construction is planned to start this year. The power purchasing agreement (PPA) is slated to come into effect in 2026 when the wind farm becomes operational.

CWP currently operates and owns 650MW of renewable energy assets in the National Electricity Market (NEM) and has another 5GW of wind, storage and firming projects in its near-medium term development portfolio, it said.

This is the 12th such deal for Snowy, bringing its renewable purchases to 4.1 terawatt hours each year, Snowy’s Managing Director and CEO Paul Broad said. The company already has a PPA in place with CWP for its Bango Wind Farm, north of Yass in NSW.

While its renewable portfolio may be expanding, the company has lost much of its green cred with its plan for the 660 MW Kurri Kurri gas plant earmarked for the NSW Hunter region. 

Calling it rather more innocuously the ‘Hunter Power Project,’ it was granted $600 million in funding from former energy minister Angus Taylor. Before being elected, Labor told the Guardian it would also support the project, but only if it runs on green hydrogen by 2030.

It is a plan, Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, says make ‘no sense.’ Since Labor’s election, the party has been quiet on the project.