Snowy Hydro is a dynamic energy company supplying electricity to more than one million homes and businesses. Since the days of their pioneering past, Snowy Hydro has grown into the fourth largest player in the Australian energy market.

Snowy Hydro not only operates the mighty Snowy Scheme (nine power stations including pumped storage at Tumut 3 Power Station and Jindabyne Pumping Station), it also operates gas and diesel peaking assets in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. They have a total generation capacity of 5,500 megawatts (MW) and offer energy insurance and other products that provide supply security and price certainty to customers in the energy market.

Snowy Hydro also owns the electricity and gas retail companies Red Energy and Lumo Energy, and the utility connections business, Direct Connect.
PSC has supported Snowy Hydro for more than three years, delivering a mixture of detailed testing, modelling and compliance reporting for 24 generators across eight stations in their portfolio. PSC’s Genassure generator testing service and PSS®E modelling team have helped Snowy Hydro obtain a detailed understanding of the generator control systems’ capabilities and characteristics, update their models and complete the compliance requirements necessary for the National Electricity Market (NEM).

PSC worked closely with Snowy Hydro to deliver this detailed programme of work. Each station was assessed separately with test plans, and other documentation prepared for testing the Governor and Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) control systems. Snowy Hydro’s engineering team, and test services team were involved in this process as the companies worked together to ensure the minimum impact on Snowy Hydro’s operations.

PSC reviewed Generator Performance Standards, the relevant National Energy Regulations (NER) and Snowy Hydro requirements before preparing Test Plans and other documentation for review. Once onsite testing was complete we managed the delivery of compliance, performance and modelling documentation.
Services provided by PSC included:

• Project Scoping and Management
• Specialist test services (Governor, AVR, Power System Stabilisation)
• Specialist modelling services (Complex waterways, model development and validation)
• Compliance assessment
• Generator performance assessment
• Planning and delivery flexibility in the dynamic Generation environment

Snowy Hydro Project Manager Brian Williams (L) and Genassure Manager Peter Brown (R) at Tumut 3 Station

Genassure Test Engineer Geoffrey Callander at Tumut 2 Station

Snowy Hydro now benefits from a comprehensive and detailed set of compliance and performance reports. PSC has completed the necessary generator model updates and validations necessary for Snowy Hydro to comply with the NERs as a member of NEM.